Personally, I’ve always been very confused by Intel’s processor branding. Core Duo and Core Solo were pretty straightforward, but not long after we were dealing with Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, which is anything but marketing friendly. Apparently, Intel agrees with us and has announced a fairly massive branding overhaul.
The “Core” name will still be around, but the focus will now be on the ix moniker, introduced with Intel’s Core i7. We’ll be getting Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7. It’s important to note that these are not brands; they’re just modifiers to differentiate feature sets within the Core family of processors. “For example, upcoming processors such as Lynnfield (desktop) will carry the Intel Core brand, but will be available as either Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 depending upon the feature set and capability. Clarksfield (mobile) will have the Intel Core i7 name,” Intel explains.
The Celeron, Pentium, and Atom brands will not be phased out, though. So basically what we’re ending up with is Celeron for simple, entry-level computing tasks, Pentium for basic computing, and Core i3/i5/i7 at the very top. Intel calls it “good, better, best”. The Intel Atom line of processors will obviously still be around for devices ranging from smartphones to netbooks.
The days for Centrino as a processor technology brand are also numbered; starting 2010, it will solely be used for Intel’s WiFi and WiMax products. In addition, Intel’s vPro technology will be paired with Intel Core i5 and i7.
The rebranding process will take a while to complete, but in 2010 everything should be in place.
Are you serious that Core 2 Quad is confusing?
Yes, because not only is Core a brand, but core is also a modifier of that same brand. So you get the weird situation where you have two numbers in one name; the “2” which modifies the processor family (Core 2), and “quad” which modifies the number of… Cores. Basically, it’s Core 2 Quad-core.
That’s just plain weird. They had two options: drop the Core brand, or remove the core modifier from the name. They opted for the latter.
atom, core, core 2 and core 4…
now that sounds a lot simpler than “core 2 duo core best” which looks like the way they were heading.
Even worse is that there wasn’t just a Core 2 Duo, but also a Core 2 Solo, which was sometimes just called Core 2. This was at a time when the term “Dual Core CPU” was a pretty new one (at least to most people) and thus suggested that a “Core 2” is a dual core CPU. I remember how surprised I was when I read that a plain “Core 2” is a single-core CPU.
Huh? Core2 dies were dual core from the begining
There was a Core Solo, basically a rebranded Pentium M.
It’s actually a Core 2 Solo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2
Brand names, particularly ones that are meant to imply the target demographic, seem to be one of the more confusing parts of branding. Indeed, Intel’s branding based upon demographic seems to parallel Microsoft’s branding based upon demographic. Having periodic changes of the branding scheme only makes matters worse since it means that you don’t understand the branding scheme as soon as marketers decide to use a different branding scheme. Which, for Intel, seems to be every couple of years.
So I’m the only one seeing the BMW analogy here?
3-Series, 5-Series, 7-Series
I wonder if we’ll eventually have an Intel Core M5 or the odd man out, the Intel Core i6.
Seriously, what do the 3, 5 and 7 mean. I don’t see any sense in the i7 having four cores.
3, 5, and 7 are all prime numbers. I can imagine Optimus describing Intel’s new line of processors as “just Prime”
. Here’s hoping they head down the gimicky Transformers marketing rout, just so I can hear that!
Nah, they’re about to turn it up to Core i11. :-p
Wanna know what 3 5 and 7 mean? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! That’s WTF they mean. They might as well had called them peanutbutter, jelly, and mayo.
The saddest part about this is that Intel probably pays these assclowns a crapton of money, and this is the best they could come up with. Jesus Christ, it just makes me mental!
How can you take something so simple and make it so f**king complicated? If I walk into Best Buy and I see an ‘i7’ processor, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS!! If you’re going to seperate them into ‘good’ ‘better’ ‘best’, why not bronze/silver/gold? Of course, people actually understand what that means just by looking at it, so of course they can’t do that.
And if i3/i5/i7 is good better best, then I guess the Pentium is average and the Celeron is piss-poor 😐
If you’re going to seperate them into ‘good’ ‘better’ ‘best’, why not bronze/silver/gold?
That’s not a bad idea. But you still have the confusing situation that they keep older stock in the distribution channel, and varying clock speeds at the different levels.
So is the gold I’m looking at older than the silver? Is the silver better for me in that instance? Should I buy a faster bronze, or a slower silver? Which has better energy efficiency / lower cooling requirements?
You might as well just have performance ratings for complete PCs, and just use the code names for the part sales – because that’s what the respective markets are most likely to understand.
That probably wouldn’t be a problem if they did a better job at differentiating which chips go with which product lines, like they used to do in the old days with Pentium 3, Pentium 4, etc.
Would you have to ask yourself if the Pentium 4 Gold was better/older than the Pentium 3 Silver? Of course, you may have a question of whether the Pentium 3 Gold is better than the Pentium 4 Bronze, in which case if the answer is not obviously no, you have a sh*tty product line and need to go back to the drawing board
Edited 2009-06-18 05:44 UTC
Where does Xeon fall in this? Is it in with the Core ix models?
Xeon is definately the most messed up mess they’re using at the moment (closely followed by Celeron) – everything from ancient (P6 based) CPUs to the latest (Core i7 based) chips.
Then there’s the CPUID family numbers – 3 (80386), 4 (80486), 5 (pentium), 6 (P6), 15 (netburst) then back to 6 (Core); because we all know that a Core 2 Quad is older than Pentium 4 (!?).
Of course while I’m here I should also poke fun at “VIA Nano”. If you’ve ever typed that into a search engine you’ll now what I mean. Maybe VIA should have called their newest CPU “The” just to make sure nobody ever gets relevant hits via. the search engines. Isaiah was a much better name.
-Brendan
via nano works perfectly well with my search engine, even without quotation marks. nano doesn’t, but neither does atom or core (btw: apple does).
What do entry-level computing tasks (or mid-level and high-level) mean in this article?
I have never been familiar with Intel (hardcore AMD fan) so to speak and I’m always antsy with reading articles about Intel. [Bad habit that needs fixing]
OK whats the difference between entry level and basic computing. I don’t know am I being daft?
Are these guys kidding? After all the fiascos surrounding Intel with the lack of open specs regarding processor optimizations (only Icc can utilize 90%+ of an Intel’s processor capabilities – the rest are sitting at a mere 30% at best), the corruption of OEMs to lock out AMD, the moronic changes in MB-sockets every 6 months, the circus of even more moronic processor bugs, stupid design decisions and eratas and most of all the repugnant CISC architecture which sits in the pantheon of dead-horses that are getting flogged back to life just to haunt the computing industry one year after the other … Are all these supposed to be written off the history record with a … name change? You can fool some ppl sometimes but you cant fool all the people all the times.
No, they just want to make it “easier” for Joe Average.
While i3, i5 and i7 mean absolutely nothing in themselves they are easier to tell apart than the Core 2 variations.
It’s enough to fool most people most of the time.
This new naming scheme doesn’t make as much sense as it should.
There will still be Celeron for low-end tasks, and Pentium for not-quite-so-low-end, and then i3, i5 and i7.
What I originally got confused with, was that Pentium was the high-end processor for years. And then it became the name for the lower-end.
Current Pentiums should be rebranded Celeron, and maybe even all the Celerons and Pentiums be rebranded “i1”. Then the naming scheme makes sense. Oh, and the mobile processors actually have the letter M in them, and ultra-low-voltage have the letters ULV in them so you really know what you’re getting.
Do they really need 5 separate CPU “families”? Whatever happened to mobile, desktop, and server?
The problem with Intel, is that they’ve always had solutions in search of problems. Do they really need to have 75-bazillion different CPUs, each with just slightly different feature sets? Do they really need full-blown feature matrix whereby they have a separate CPU for each possible combination of CPU features? I swear they have math geeks for marketing droids, who look at the features list (VMX, VTx, NX, vPro, DDR2, DDR3, dual-channel RAM, triple-channel RAM, Turbo, SSE3, SSE4, yadda yadda, blah blah, etc) and come up with cartesian? joins to come up with the model names.
Whatever happened to KISS?
Atom for palmtops, Centrino for laptops, Pentium for desktops, Xeon for servers. There are your brands.
Then, maybe add a CPU architecture (Core vs i7).
Then, add a model number that accurately describes the CPU and that can be used to easily, quickly, simply show “this CPU is better than that CPU” (ie, bigger numbers means better CPU).
Put that together, and you get nice names like:
Atom 250
Celeron Core 535
Pentium Core 534
Pentium i7 783
Xeon Core 234
Xeon i7 834
Crap, I think I just earned myself a Ph.D in “Marketing”.
AMD got this right, at least on the Opteron side of things. Everything is called Opteron.
3-digit model numbers are 1st generation, where the first digit is the number of sockets in the motherboard, and the next two are relative performance.
4-digit model numbers are 3rd generation, where the first digit is the number of sockets in the motherboard, the second digit is the number of cores in the CPU, and the next two are relative performance.
It’s very easy to figure out what Opteron 120 means in relation to Opteron 220, or Opteron 2220, or Opteron 8420.
Edited 2009-06-18 17:25 UTC
I don’t know if this helps me any better than the current system.
On the desktop, they will have Celeron (“good”), Pentium (“better”) and Core (“best”). Nothing changed there. To the Core they now have i3 (“entry-level”), i5 (“mid-level”), and i7 (“high-end”).
Celeron is the good, affordable entry level platform and Core i3 is the best entry-level platform. Traditionally, “affordable” has coincided with “entry-level.” So now we have an expensive entry-level chip (the i3)? The iMac chip?
Since there are “Extreme Edition” i7’s, then i7 doesn’t correspond with high-end.
vPro, Clarksfield (mobile) and Lynnfield (desktop) will each have Core i5 and i7 versions. These are differentiated by “featureset and capability.”
Intel will also use the star rating system -“More stars indicate greater features and increased capabilities” – which is what i3, i5, and i7 are supposed to denote. http://www.intel.com/consumer/rating.htm
But I don’t know which are dual-core or quad core or anything else from a number like i7-975. Clarkdale and Arrandale dual-core will roll out later this year and there will be dual core i7s. Hexacore is coming.
With their track record, I don’t have faith that their numbering scheme will be any more rational or informative than the current one: I can’t just look at “i7-940”, “i7-950” “i7-965”, or “i7-975” and know one is a “base” i7 and the other Extreme.
It can’t seriously be that hard to come up with a sensible naming scheme for laymen to understand.
They just need to drop Celeron and Pentium if they want to keep Atom and iX. Cheap, entry level, low power v.s. not crap. It’s like they reinvented the Celeron v.s. Pentium system, but kept the old system also.
Aren’t the actual Celerons based on the Core Solo CPU, that performs better than a Pentium IV ?
AFAIK there is a 2GHz Celeron now with Conroe-L core that appears to be a one-core-version of the Core Duo.
So I don’t understand what the Intel employee says. Enlighten me please.
I would like to substitute the mainboard of my 500 MHz IBM with a new thas this Celeron.
How many freaking cores do these things have. I’m pretty sure they don’t have 3, 5 or 7 cores… even though that’s what this new naming scheme makes it sound like…
Now the number of cores is even more obscure! Thanks for clearing up the confusion, guys!!! *thumbs up* /sarcasm
Old Lady: “I don’t like Core, have you got anything without Core in it?”
Young Man: “Oh I like Core, I’ll take yours and I’ll have the Core, Eggs, Bacon, Core and Core…”