The short version
- Moon Lake is a rumoured family of entry-level Intel laptop chips with no P-cores. It reportedly uses just four LP E-cores based on the Darkmont design.
- It's said to be built on Intel 18A, with a 6W base power that can be set as high as 15W, on the same BGA 1516 package as Wildcat Lake.
- The target, going by the specs, is laptops under $300 to $400 (roughly ₹28,500 to ₹38,000 before taxes), with 8GB to 16GB of memory.
- This comes from leaker Jaykihn on X, reported by Wccftech on October 29. Intel hasn't announced Moon Lake's specs, and there's no launch date.
What leaked
Jaykihn shared a spec table covering Intel's two cheapest laptop families. The surprise is Moon Lake. Intel's mainstream laptop chips all have at least a couple of big P-cores (performance cores) for heavy lifting. Moon Lake, according to the leak, has none. Its four cores are all LP E-cores, the low-power efficient cores Intel normally keeps on the side for background work and video playback.
Intel has sold P-core-free chips before. The N100 and N150 in cheap laptops and mini PCs use only E-cores. But those are regular E-cores, while Moon Lake would be built entirely from the low-power kind.
Those four cores would be Darkmont, the same core Intel uses as its E-core in Panther Lake, built on Intel's own 18A process. The chip reportedly runs at 6W by default and can be configured up to 15W by the laptop maker. Wccftech's sources also describe it as continuing Intel's chiplet design, with the chip split into separate tiles.
What we don't know is just as important. There's no information on the graphics yet. Wccftech guesses one or two Xe3 GPU cores, but that's its estimate, not part of the leak. There's no NPU figure, no clock speeds and no date.
How it compares with Wildcat Lake
Moon Lake would sit below Wildcat Lake, which Intel launched in April 2026 as Core Series 3, also on 18A. Intel calls Core Series 3 its first hybrid AI-ready Core Series chip, with up to 40 platform TOPS. The same leak also covers a Wildcat Lake Refresh, possibly in the first half of 2027.
Image: Zerocade
The pattern is clear on paper. Wildcat Lake pairs up to two P-cores with four LP E-cores. The Refresh reportedly doubles the P-cores to four and stretches power to 35W. Moon Lake goes the other way, cutting the P-cores entirely and dropping power to a level closer to a tablet chip.
What a chip like this is for
Think school laptops, Chromebook-style machines and cheap Windows notebooks that mostly run a browser, documents and video calls. Four small cores at 6W should mean a cool, fanless design and long battery life. That's exactly what LP E-cores are built for. We break down the three core types in our P-core, E-core and LP E-core explainer.
For gaming, set your expectations low. Games lean hard on one or two fast cores for their main thread, and Moon Lake has nothing that's designed for peak speed. On paper it's a machine for cloud gaming services and light indie titles, not for running modern PC games locally. If you care about single-thread performance, this isn't your chip.
The caveats
This is one leaker's spec table, and Intel hasn't confirmed any of it. Jaykihn is a regular source of Intel line-up leaks, including the Nova Lake naming we covered, but plans for low-end chips change often and quietly.
The thing to watch for is a graphics configuration and a launch window. Those two details will decide whether Moon Lake is a real budget laptop option or just a Chromebook part.
