The release of next-gen gaming CPUs is inherently tied to the development of new breakthroughs in CPU manufacturing and design. One such step towards a future Intel CPU design has seemingly been revealed in a new leak that suggests one of Intel’s future CPU core designs will be codenamed Intel Cobra Core.
Aside from having a badass-sounding name, little is known about what could be included in the new Intel CPU design. It appears to be destined to compete for a place on future best gaming CPU listings, but the technology it will incorporate and when it might arrive are details yet to see the light of day.
What a new leak does speculate, though, is that Cobra Core appears to be the follow-up to the company’s Royal Core CPU architecture, which is set to follow on from the Lion Cove design used in the company’s upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs.
Specifically, the Lion Cove, Royal Core, and Cobra Core names refer to the design of the P-Cores of Intel’s CPUs. So, take Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake/Intel Core Ultra 200 CPUs, for instance. The name Arrow Lake refers to the overarching chip design, which includes P-Cores and E-Cores, along with the integrated GPU and other parts of a modern CPU. Within Arrow Lake, are the codenames for the different parts of the CPU, which include Lion Cove for the P-Cores and Skymont for the E-Cores, while the GPU uses the new Xe2 Battlemage architecture.
Lion Cove, then, is believed to be replaced by a new CPU core design, called Royal Core. Leaks, such as the one via Moore’s Law is Dead in the vide above, suggest this core design will also be used for future Intel Nova Lake, Beast Lake, and Beast Lake Next CPU designs.
That finally brings us to where Cobra Core comes in to play. It’s believed to be the successor to Royal Core as the main core design for future intel CPUs. There’s no suggestion of what the overarching CPU design might be codenamed, but there should still be plenty of lakes left from which to choose.
This leak has been brought to the attention of the wider world via the site gemma0burst, which cites a Linkedin profile for an Intel employee that mentions a role including “New Core Architecture for Intel – Royal/Cobra Core.” The entry goes on to say that the goal of the role is to create a new Intel x86 architecture that is “more power efficient and high performance” compared to other competitors.
Given the nature of this highly speculative source, none of this can be taken as gospel and should instead been seen as pure speculation for now. Indeed, regular tech leaker Moore’s Law is Dead has recently posted a video speculating that Royal Core has been killed off by Intel. Regardless, we can’t help but hope at least the name of this architecture proves to be true, as it’s one worthy of a powerful CPU.
For more on what we know about Intel’s next generation of desktop CPUs, check out our Intel Arrow Lake guide that details everything we know so far about the chips that will be arriving in the next few weeks.
