ⓘ Intel

Intel's public graphics CI infrastructure has inadvertently confirmed that desktop Nova Lake-S silicon is taped out and running Linux internally. The find comes from @InstLatX64 on X, who spotted kernel boot logs from the intel-gfx-ci project on the drm-xe-fixes branch (test run xe-fixes-259, commit ef526d122b62, dated August 16).

The logs show two test boards identified as Nova Lake-S, listed as bat-nvls-1 and bat-nvls-2. Both report a DMI string of "Intel Corporation Nova Lake Client Platform / NVL-S" and decode to CPUID 300F15 (family 0x12, model 0x1, stepping 0x5), sharing a BIOS build dated July 16, 2026. Both samples also expose AVX-512 and APX register save states in their XSAVE feature list.

The two boards also differ in configuration. bat-nvls-1, a "NVL-S UDIMM 1DPC eDP CRB Fab2" board, shows 24 cores and 24 threads, with a 3,400 MHz base clock. bat-nvls-2, listed as "NVL-S UDIMM 1DPC OC EVCRB," shows 28 cores and 28 threads, with a 3,200 MHz base clock.

This does not confirm final retail core counts, clock speeds, or branding. Engineering samples almost always run below production clocks and sometimes ship with cores disabled for validation purposes. What the CI data does establish is that desktop Nova Lake-S is already booting on at least two board revisions.

Giang Bùi - Tech Writer - 100 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2026

Instead of sports, I spent my school years buried in researching about everything tech, looking into chips and specs instead of doing whatever normal kids did. I am now writing for NotebookCheck, hoping that research finally reaches more people than just me and a text file.