Two industry insiders have pushed new details about Intel’s unannounced Nova Lake-S desktop family. Jaykihn recently claimed an upcoming Nova Lake-S SKU would carry 144 MB of bLLC (Big Last Level Cache), a supplemental cache pool that could bolster Intel’s competitiveness in the gaming desktop market where AMD has had success with 3D V-Cache. The 144 MB figure surfaced as a notable single-tile boost that analysts say could change performance expectations for certain workloads.
Following that post, kopite7kimi provided additional claims that Intel plans four individual unlocked SKUs as part of the late 2026 Core Ultra 400 CPU family that will feature bLLC implementations. Experts cited in the thread expect the extra cache to be added to the Nova Lake-S design’s compute tile. The discussion also differentiated between expected single-tile configurations and possible dual-tile options, indicating Intel may ship multiple die configurations under the same family to target different segments of the desktop market.
Conversation around die configurations referenced a previously reported 52-core engineering sample that used a dual-tile layout described as two 8+16 tiles plus 4 low power cores. Sources now propose a variant that could implement 144 MB of Big Last Level Cache on each tile, producing a combined 288 MB bLLC in-package. Kopite7kimi cautioned that the information is not final and added a platform-level caveat, writing ‘(I am) not 100% sure yet. The power supply design of the new platform will be a challenge for motherboard manufacturers.’ Another dual-tile possibility discussed would use two 8+12 tiles. Taken together, the tips sketch a lineup of multiple unlocked Nova Lake-S SKUs with varying core counts and significant bLLC provisions, though details remain unconfirmed.
