Intel Nova Lake CPUs Reportedly Comes With A New Nomenclature Involving Four Digits

While the general environment of PC building has been really chaotic for all the wrong reasons as of late, Intel has been quietly chugging along with its processor plans – latest indications say the chipmaker is going to come up with a “new” naming system for its upcoming Nova Lake family of processors, though it perhaps look quite familiar after all.

Intel Nova Lake Returns To Old 4-Digit Naming

When the original Core i lineup went past the 10th generation, five-digit model names was proved to be not-so-popular among the community. So, Team Blue stuck with 3 digits when it made the branding switch to Core Ultra, and up until this point all processors under both Core / Core Ultra follow the same naming rules.

According to previous reports by Golden Pig Upgrade however, the decision to reintroduce 4-digit nomenclature comes down to “too many SKUs”. In any case, there are several known SKUs with the new naming system, which will only be applicable to desktop (Nova Lake-S) and high-performance laptop processors (Nova Lake-HX). They reportedly are:

Some interesting points to note: bLLC models, which stands for big Last Level Cache, has a special model suffix “BFC” appended, though it’s unclear what exactly these three letters stand for. The presence of a 4-core Low Power E-core cluster as standard is likely for power efficiency as well. Other than that, most naming rules we’ve seen from Intel thus far continue to be applicable here.

Meanwhile, laptop-bound models such as Nova Lake-P, Nova Lake-U, and Nova Lake-UL will stick to 3-digit nomenclature as usual, according to leaker Jaykihn. In any case, expect more details to emerge in the coming months as the chipmaker prepares the lineup for launch sometime in Q4 2026 or Q1 2027.

Pokdepinion: Well, I expect AMD to do the same in no time.