Intel's very own "Halo" SoCs are being prepped as next-generation Razor Lake-AX chips have received first support on HWiNFO.
The Intel Razor Lake-AX chips will be part of the Razor Lake lineup, which will feature next-gen CPU, GPU, and NPU architectures. The AX lineup is different from the standard S and H SKUs, as the family is designed to be bigger and better. There has so far been no "AX" chip on the market; the first was going to be Nova Lake-AX, but after its cancellation , all eyes are set on Razor Lake-AX to tackle AMD's Halo competition, which is currently leading the space with unprecedented levels of performance and features.
HWiNFO has now shown that "Preliminary" support for Intel Razor Lake-AX is coming to its upcoming version of the real-time monitoring software. The support is significant as it confirms that Intel has laid the groundwork for these chips, and development is going smoothly. Launch time is still years away, as Razor Lake arrives after Nova Lake (scheduled for early 2027). We are expecting the AX family to launch sometime between 2028 and 2029.
As for what we know about Intel's Razor Lake-AX, the AX family will be a unique segment, aiming at high-end laptops and mobile platforms. Razor Lake, in general, will be an optimized variant of Nova Lake, with Griffin Cove P-Cores and Golden Eagle E-Cores. Since Nova Lake is going to pack Xe3 and Xe3P iGPUs , Razor Lake can go with either a refined version of Xe3P "Celestial" or the next-gen Xe4 "Druid" uArch .
The lineup is also expected to deploy on-package memory using the latest available standards of the time, such as LPDDR6. This will be a big move as Intel dropped On-Package Memory after using it once on Lunar Lake chips. So far, neither Arrow Lake nor Nova Lake CPUs are expected to feature On-Package Memory. The addition of this memory subsystem means that Intel will go for the unified memory architecture approach, which has shown its usefulness on various AI-aimed PC platforms such as DGX Spark, Strix Halo, and the upcoming Gorgon Halo & RTX Spark series.
Razor Lake will be launching on both desktop and mobile platforms by 2027, enabling socket & pin compatibility with Nova Lake platforms, so the transition between the standard S, H, and HX families will be seamless. But Razor Lake-AX, which takes things a notch higher, is going to require different designs as its full-on SoC design with a mix of high CPU core count and high GPU core count, embedded cache, and various controllers.
Razer Lake-AX, which will be the competitor to AMD's Halo-class APUs. AMD currently has Strix Halo positioned as the upper echelon of its AI PC SoCs, with Gorgon Halo refresh expected this year. The company will release Medusa Halo sometime in 2027-2028 . The launch of Razer Lake-AX might coincide with Intel's custom Serpent Lake SoCs , which will fuse its x86 core architectures with NVIDIA's RTX GPUs.
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