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Intel Hardware

Intel Dropping Pentium Brand 364

Posted by Zonk from the getting-old-anyway dept.
Devistater writes "After changing their logo from 'Intel Inside' to 'Leap Ahead,' (and attempting to explain why 2006 is a leap year), Intel has now decided to drop the Pentium brand. Instead of an 'Intel Pentium 4 Dual core' you will be now be purchasing an 'Intel D 840.' You can see the intial steps of this move on Dell's desktop lineup. On the heels of the news of AMD outselling Intel in Desktop Retail sales for two consecutive months, is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"
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Intel Dropping Pentium Brand More

Intel Dropping Pentium Brand

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  • new logo? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MadJo ( 674225 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:29AM (#14481135) Homepage Journal
    Funny that Slashdot's category image sticks to the age-old logo for Intel.
    • Well, they only changed the logo a couple of days ago.

      Looking at the icons list, AOL, Corel and Caldera / SCO have out of date logos as well, someone needs to go through and change them. (The iMac and Xbox icons are older hardware as well).

    • Ooh Ahhh Wowwww! (Score:5, Funny)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @11:41AM (#14482048) Journal
      Well, I certainly feel better served with a new marketing campaign. I mean, dropping the name "Pentium" must reallllly make those CPUs fly, and boy with the new logo, Intel's product line will just automagically accrue speed, efficiency and reliability.

      Am I the only one that thinks all marketers should be locked in a dark dungeon?

  • Changing brands (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ducttapekz ( 879839 ) <`kzettel' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:30AM (#14481141)
    is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"

    Sure it is. The first thing I think of is the original Pentium when I hear the word Pentium. Without the 4 after it, it inheritly sounds slow.
    • But add the '4', and it sounds incredibly hot!

    • Re:Changing brands (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LePrince ( 604021 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:26AM (#14481451)
      Maybe this'll come at a surprise, but geeks aren't the majority of the market when it comes to PC. Most households have one, and it's not most household that have a geek.

      So, when Mr Smith, accountant that has a PC at home to surf the web, get his emails and play a few games of Tiger Woods golf asks himself is he wants a PC, what will he look for ? Brand recognition. Will I buy a AMD, or a Pentium ?

      Sure, if he got a geeky nephew, the nephew will maybe direct him to a AMD processor, but if he's Joe 6pack average, and wants recognition, he'll go for what ? For that thing he heard a lot on the news, during the last 11 years, a... whatcha call it... PENTIUM.

      He won't go for a Pentium 3.4 HT w/533fsb 1mb L2 cache. He'll go for a Pentium. PENTIUM. Doesn't matter wether it's a Celeron or a Dualcore; he wants a Pentium. For the same price, Joe Average will buy a 2.4ghz Celeron over a AMD 3800+ Dualcore (i dunno if those exist, it's a mere example; the CPU business goes too fast for me, I change my PC every 2 years because my 2yo PC still plays the games I want it to play and I'm not really up to date in the CPU technologies). Why ? You've guessed it : because it's a PENTIUM !

      • Re:Changing brands (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tango42 ( 662363 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:37AM (#14481540)
        Isn't Celeron a completely separate range from Pentium? Just because it's an intel processor doesn't make it a Pentium. If Joe 6-pack is willing to buy a Celeron because it's made by the same people as make the Pentium he's heard so much about, surely he'll buy whatever the new name is too?
    • And besides all kinds of other reasons, I guess that after the couple of years that we have lived now with "Pentium 4", it would have been a tough step for Intel to move on to either "Pentium 5" or "Pentium V". It would have sounded too much like a step back in history instead of moving forward to the next thing.

  • Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Snamh Da Ean ( 916391 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:33AM (#14481148)
    It might seem crazy now, but it is hard to think of companies that really suffered (to the extent of exiting the industry) when they changed their brand names. Quality determines whether a product will be successful, and advertising and branding determine who successful it will be.

    I am sure Intel have given a great deal of thought to this, and in a few years saying D 860 or whatever will be completely natural. As it is, they are going to get bucketloads of publicity from the name change and that will help their bottom line.

    • Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:31AM (#14481496) Homepage
      Quality determines whether a product will be successful, and advertising and branding determine who successful it will be.

      A good example of that would be the Toyota Camry. It is a very good car. For the most part Camry owners wouldn't even think about buying a different car. Toyota earned their brand loyalty by not compromising on quality.

      But can you really say the same thing about Intel? My working boxes are all AMD's. To me they offer more bang for the buck. When I think of Intel what comes to mind is not that they're the very best product for the $$$. Instead what comes to my mind is monopolistic business practices with Dell. I'm not saying there's anything more to it than my impression, but that's what I think about when I see Intel Inside.

      When I think about quality cars, Camry is what comes to mind. When I think about quality processors, AMD takes the top slot...or maybe I should say Socket A. ;)

    • "It might seem crazy now, but it is hard to think of companies that really suffered (to the extent of exiting the industry) when they changed their brand names."

      Well, of course. If you remembered the new brand name, it would have been effective, yes? It's telling that we don't remember the examples of companies whose rebranding ended in failure.

      But, there have been some notable bad ones, such as the UK's Royal Mails rebranding to Consignia. Sure, they didn't exit the industry, but it's a special ca

    • Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chrish ( 4714 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:50AM (#14481650) Homepage
      I think Intel's marketing dept. has gone bat-shit insane in the last year or two. The switch to basically random model numbers, and now this... it looks like they've got a sincere desire to confuse their customers. Are they hoping folks will accidentally buy too-expensive CPUs, or that they'll be happy with low-end CPUs that have high model numbers?

      Also, they can't trademark letters...

      • This is just sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gaurzilla ( 665469 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @12:15PM (#14482345)
        Agreed. I was checking this out a week back (and perhaps should have gotten first dibs on a story at Slashdot).

        Although I'm a bit of a techie but I haven't looked at processors in a while. So I visited the intel website and I found it impossible to penetrate the permutations of the set {Pentium, D, Dual, Core, HT, Extreme} [intel.com]. They mean nothing to me except, perhaps, sound cool.

        So I figred that they MUST have some kind of comparison chart so that I can make some sense of this. Really had to dig for it, but I found this [intel.com]
        So, er .. that still doesn't help me. I want to know how fast / powerful / capable a processor is. Who cares whether it has HT or if it's Exxxtreeeme!

        Look at the fine print at the bottom of any product comparison page - "Intel processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family, not across different processor families. See http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ [intel.com] for details."

        Go ahead and click it. You will find :
        "The processor number is not a measurement of performance, nor is it the only factor to consider when selecting a processor.

        The digits themselves have no inherent meaning, particularly when looking across processor families. For instance, 840 is not "better" than 640 simply because 8 is greater than 6.

        Furthermore, linear increments between processor numbers may not indicate linear feature advancements. For example, the differences in processor features between an Intel® Pentium® M processor 760 and an Intel® Pentium® M processor 765 will not be the same as between an Intel® Pentium® M processor 765 and an Intel® Pentium® M processor 770, even though both pairs of processors are separated by an increment of five digits.

        Processor numbers do not represent specific system configurations and do not replace system-level benchmarks."

        WTF?!

        Yes, perhaps it is a good idea to start naming processors after "features" because focus has started shifting towards better design of processors (rather than just brute force speed). But then again, I would like some solid benchmark to compare all these processors.

        I say they should just measure in FLOPS and leave it be. What they have now is just sad.

    • Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Doctor Memory ( 6336 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @12:17PM (#14482364)
      it is hard to think of companies that really suffered ... when they changed their brand names

      Tell it to the folks at PricewaterhouseCoopers, when they changed their name to Monday [monday.com].

      Astute clickers will find that that link doesn't lead to a site named Monday.com...

  • Smart (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GiggidyGiggidy ( 935020 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:33AM (#14481151)
    The Pentium name has been around for too long, it sounds old and used. However most common users may not even know Pentium, as long as they see the "Intel Inside" logo they think they are getting the best machine.

    • Re:Smart (Score:2, Interesting)

      by blackraven14250 ( 902843 )
      By the way, they're getting rid of that "Intel Inside" slogan thing, too.

    • Re:Smart (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xtracto ( 837672 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:42AM (#14481220) Journal
      Not 100% true,

      I have just "converted" some clients (3 specifically) from Intel to AMD, they where die hard "ignorant brand-name buying" users which believed that Intel is better than AMD (and VIA and any other CPU manufacturers) just because they saw more commercials on TV.

      What I told them is the tale of the NN processing bits, I told them "do you remember a long time ago, when machines used Windows 3.1, well, when you changed from that to Windows 95, you used a machine that was 32 bits, instead of 16 bits. Well, that was in 1995! now AMD has new processors which are 64 bits, thus can use Windows XP 64 instead of the normal Windows XP which is still 32 bits!" .

      I know my tale is not 100% accurate or complete but, I did those people a favor, they spent quite less using AMD and that also showed them that GHZ is not everything (that along with "the mother of all charts" [tomshardware.com] of tom's hardware".

      Of course, the computers I am talking about are setup by me, the problem with brand computers (dell, hp, gateway, etc) is that they do not offer alternatives, or the AMD alternatives always seem pretty bad
      • "VIA and any other CPU manufacturers"

        Well.. any CPU is better than VIA CPU..

        Oh the horrors I have to tell..

      • Re:Smart (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jtshaw ( 398319 )
        So in other words you think that just because something has more bits it is better? That is total none sense. Believe it or not, many things have no performance benefit running in 64 bit mode.

        64 bit processors also need larger instruction caches because the instructions are way bigger in size. As a result, some small subset of things perform slower in 64 bit mode.

        You essentially use a similar argument to the "ours is faster then yours because of Ghz." argument. Both are equally as wrong.

        AMD's chips that

        • Re:Smart (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Antifuse ( 651387 ) <slashdot@ryanwPA ... m minus language> on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:38AM (#14481550) Homepage
          Actually, I don't think that's what he was saying. He sorta fudged things a bit to get his clients to buy AMD instead of Intel.
        • So in other words you think that just because something has more bits it is better?....
          AMD's chips that are faster are faster because of better overall design, not because of the number of bits they have. The Alpha and MIPS chips were 64 bit for years and still performed much worse in many benchmarks then a lot of 32bit chips.

          Well, I have to apoligize for my English, as it seems you did not understood what I said, I hope you can excuse me as English is not my native tongue.

          What I wrote (and what I was tryin

      • Another relation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bradleyland ( 798918 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:49AM (#14481638)
        I always ask my customers about their cars. I ask them if they wouldn't like to drive the same car as their mechanic, or at a minimum, that they would trust their mechanic's advice on what is reliable and offers good performance for the dollar. I'm their mechanic, only I work on their PC. If you look under the hood of my computer, you'll find AMD; because they offer a stable, affordable, and stronger alternative to Intel. It also helps to let them know that AMD has outsold Intel in the retail channel.

        • Re:Another relation (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Sebastopol ( 189276 )


          Bad example. Mechanics are way out of touch.

          I also know a lot of mechanics who drive tricked out, oh excuse me, pimped out or monster cars and obsess about meaningless details (THC 4 speed better than Mopar! No way, my chevy 350 smallblock will bury your hemi!) Nitrous bottles? Bored over engines? How exactly is this good advice to someone looking for a reliable fuel efficient car? Most mechanics obsess about performance cars and have zero grasp of practicality.

          The PC service industry and the Car servi

    • Re:Smart (Score:5, Insightful)

      by roderickm ( 6912 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:42AM (#14481584)
      Exactly -- pentium conjures "fifth generation," or at best a years-old product, which isn't the image they want for the newest dual core processors. CPU technology has come a long way since the pentium, and the name should reflect that. But it's much deeper than that -- Intel's fighting the brand battle 3-6 years in the future. They're positioning the Intel brand to be much stronger in the coming years.

      When you know how to spot it, it become blatantly obvious: product identifiers become non-words or just short strings of digits so the manufacturer's name will again become part of product mentions. Auto manufacturers have known this for decades. Remember when the "Legend" and "Vigor" brands disappeared in favor of the "Acura TL" and "Acura RL?" Acura learned form what BMW, Mercedes, and others knew for years. You don't drive a 323i or a C350, you drive a BMW 323i or a Mercedes C350. Only when in-context do the models become shortened to their simple model names or series/class name. Now Intel's following this path.

      Keeping the company brand in balance with the products is essential; if one product overshadows the company, the company loses identity. Apple's quietly fighting to keep "Apple" in front of "iPod" and pushing "Mac" back into the name of its flagship notebook. If the company overshadows its products, the products become less competitive and buying habits focus on company loyalty -- think household appliances, in which the brand name is so strong vs individual products that often the same manufacturer supplies many brands with nearly-identical but rebadged versions.

      Intel is wise to make the change now. AMD fans brag about "Athlons" and "Opterons," not "AMDs." Intel forces its products to raise the awareness of their company by reducing product names to non-words. Now, their CPUs will be marketed as "Intel D 840" etc and only hardware-aware geeks will shorten it to '840. It's a subtle reminder that Intel (not pentium) is the brand to trust.

      Their longstanding "Intel inside" campaign makes this transition possible, even easy. On the other hand, when AMD retires the Athlon name, for instance, they will lose substantial brand awareness because "Athlon" has much more brand strength than "AMD." I've found numerous non-technical people that figure Athlon is made by Intel, simply because that's the only CPU manufacturer they recognize.
      • If "Pentium" is a fifth generation processor, then the next logical name should indicate a sixth generation processor. "Sexium" is just such a hot name.

      • Re:Smart (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NoData ( 9132 )
        When you know how to spot it, it become blatantly obvious: product identifiers become non-words or just short strings of digits so the manufacturer's name will again become part of product mentions. Auto manufacturers have known this for decades. Remember when the "Legend" and "Vigor" brands disappeared in favor of the "Acura TL" and "Acura RL?" Acura learned form what BMW, Mercedes, and others knew for years. You don't drive a 323i or a C350, you drive a BMW 323i or a Mercedes C350. Only when in-context do

        • Re:Smart (Score:3, Interesting)

          by angle_slam ( 623817 )
          I think that cryptic model names may have another cost--it makes the various models blend together in a way that makes it difficult to strongly stratify the product line. There is a big "psychological" difference between a Corolla and a Camry. How much difference is there (psychologically) between a 325 and a 525? There's a $15,000 difference in price tag, so you better make the 525 buyer really feel like there getting something special to move them up. But if a "BMW is a BMW" then why bother? How much more

  • Oh, don't worry, we'll know ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:33AM (#14481155) Journal
    ... is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?
    Oh, don't worry. Buying a CPU isn't like buying a toothbrush. No one says, "I'll take that one, it sounds cool" or "I recognize that name, I want that one." Everyone I know that's purchased a CPU by itself actually reads up on what the reviews say. And anyone that buys a computer doesn't really care what Dell is putting in there (trust me, my parents are the proud owners of a celeron *shudders*).

    Further more, Intel chips are going to go into Macs so maybe a name change will be good to make the Mac users feel like they're recieving the new improved intel?

  • AMD leaps beyond while Intel limps along.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blankoboy ( 719577 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:34AM (#14481157)
    Intel's marketing guys need a serious kick in the genitals. First they get smoked by AMD with http://www.leapsbeyond.com/ [leapsbeyond.com] and now they are dropping the Pentium moniker. Why on earth they are killing their brand name recognition they have spent millions drilling into everyone's minds is beyond me. They did not need a 'reinvention' from a marketing point of view but a reinvention of the actual product itself. AMD is really making up for where intel is mis-stepping. They really are leaps beyond Intel IMO.

  • About time! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Fiachra06 ( 945611 ) *
    Honestly I'm surprised they stuck with Pentium brand for so long. It's was kinda starting to feel like police acadamy movies.
  • Well, they have been using the Pentium 4 brand since when, 2001? The architecture has changed quite a lot during those years, and yet they kept "Pentium 4" until a while ago. Why for?

    But then, getting rid of the whole Pentium brand is kind of weird - build something for 10 years until it becomes recognizable worldwide and is considered as a synonymous of computers (for computer illiterate people at least) and then just throw it away like that?

    Are they in such need for a fresh start?
    • Well, you're still running Linux 2. For how long now? Simply you release new major version if the changes are far from previous revision. But if in course of 800 tiny revisions you went from a tiny mailer to suite of office apps, people still expect you to release TinyMailer 1.0.801 and not MegaOffice 2.0 if the changes introduced with last update are just some GUI tweaks.
      Seems dual-core is enough of a leap to abandon old naming scheme.

      AMD went the smart way with doubling marketing names. Athlons, Durons/Se

  • Great Move (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scherermaddness ( 924425 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:35AM (#14481169)
    Please recall that AMD is only surpassing Intel in Retail sales, so these are the sales not of a computer that is already built like a dell. the retail purchaser will have an understanding or a knowlege of the naming of the chips before they purchase them (as does a current amd purchaser know the difference between a 939 and a 754 chipset). I think that this will not affect sales in its strogest catagories such as with gateway, dell or sony computers, and will only help retail sales because consumers can now see naming stratagies closer to that of AMD's.
    • However, it _does_ mean that people who make a concious decision of the processor they want choose AMD over Intel. This is very important from an outlook prospective because it's basically saying "when people research it and are given a choice, they will usually pick AMD". The OEM's are usually bound by contract. They aren't choosing the best processor. They're choosing what they can get cheapest. Geeks have influence as to what their family/friends buy. I forsee in the next couple of years market demand wi

  • It's all about the Pentiums, baby.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BenJeremy ( 181303 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:35AM (#14481173)
    Losing the brand name is stupid. Intel even has pop culture behind it.

    Kind of like when my wife's real estate agency went from "Better Homes and Gardens" to "GMAC" Ugh. "GMAC" stands for General Motors Assurance Corporation - how boring is that?

    Likewise, other recognizable brands or trade names have been wasted into oblivion by idiots sitting on boards who have no clue what they are doing. Witness "Securitas" - what's that, you say? It used to be known as "The Pinkerton Agency" - ahhh... now you recognize it, right? Recognize it fromt he countless pop culture references in western movies and books.

    Modern Marketing sucks bigtime.

  • It's OK to drop Pentium (Score:5, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:36AM (#14481180) Homepage Journal
    I don't mind Intel dropping the Pentium brand. It will just help people I talk to remember that "D" stands for Digital Restrictions Managment in the new Intel computers.

  • desktop vs global (Score:2, Interesting)

    by totya ( 746634 )
    the pentium brand is only meaningful in PCs. they couldn't benefit from it in PDAs, phones and potentially other devices. if they standardize, like the D, X (scale, in PDAs), etc, it can be taken to the new, "global" level, without having to separate by product type.

    my $0.02

  • Pentium is old (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:37AM (#14481185) Homepage
    The brand name is old enough that people associate it with old and (comparable) slow computers. And old is not a good association for computers.

  • back to the part numbers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:40AM (#14481204) Homepage
    Considering that the "Pentium" product name has been around for 12 years, and refers to a "5th generation" processor design that's pretty well obsolete, I'm surprised it took them this long to retire it. Maybe someone pointed out that "Pentium 5" would be literally repetitive and the fact that the brand is so "last century" started to sink in?

    What does surprise me is that they haven't come up with a better product name to replace it. The whole point of using "Pentium" instead of "i586" was trademark and brand identity, and going back to numbers and letters loses that.

    • Prior to introducing the Pentium, Intel had already relased an Ethernet card called the 586, based on their 82586 chipset. I remember installing some in some servers delivered around 1992.

    • Re:back to the part numbers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:25AM (#14481442)
      It seems like the lack of replacement-name indicates that Intel is trying to reinforce the brand of the company (Intel) instead of the brand of the chip (Pentium). This is probably because their lineup has diversified.

      With AMD catching up or even outperforming them in sales in many areas of the market, Intel's marketing people probably want people to buy a "genuine" Intel product, and the specifics matter less. Whether they get (what was formerly called) a Pentium, a Centrino, an Itanium or a Celeron matters less; but this brings into the linelight the perceived importance of the company producing the chip. And Intel is still recognised by the average consumer much more than AMD. Whereas they were diluting their brand by having many different chip names.

      Furthermore, this throws down the gauntlet for AMD. Previously, all AMD would have to do is get reasonable mindshare for "Athlon" compared to "Pentium". Now they would need to essentially unseat the entire "Intel" brand, which is a much tougher row to hoe.
    • The whole point of using "Pentium" instead of "i586" was trademark and brand identity, and going back to numbers and letters loses that.

      Exactly. Intel couldn't stop e.g. Cyrix from selling a chip named "80586", so what's stopping the competition today from releasing a chip called "AMD D 750"?

  • trademarking letters once again? (Score:4, Funny)

    by SpinJaunt ( 847897 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:40AM (#14481205)
    I await the day Intel try to trademark the letter D after failing to get i.

  • and an another homepage, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:41AM (#14481209) Journal

    http://www.leapsbeyond.com/ [leapsbeyond.com]

    Who has done that?
  • While it is time to get rid of Pentium, as it is a not a new product any more, naming the new CPUs with silly names like 'D 860' or whatever will only alienate more people than attracting them to Intel. What Intel should have done is find a new name that is high tech and shows that Intel has jumped into the future. But I guess somehow Intel has to die, and making stupid moves like that is the best way to do so...
  • It's the right time for a change - taking any brand name past three or four versions makes it look dated, which is something Intel is particularly looking to avoid. Sad to say some of the less smart consumers buying PCs really do by on brand name.

    The timing of this is interesting; it would have been much simpler to do all the brand changes in one go. This suggests that the initial branding changes went through, someone in the desktop division pulled a pet project to dump the brand and managed to get his i
  • "Pentium" - Greek root, Latin inflexion, nothing good could have come of it. But then, when you think about it, Advanced Micro Devices is its own mission statement, while "Intel" suggests they acquire their knowledge through espionage. Proper chip companies have three letter names - IBM, AMD, VIA. Time for Intel to play catch up in this area as well.

  • what comes after Pentium? Sexium? (Score:3, Funny)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:49AM (#14481259)
    well, as Pentium was a made up word because they couldn't trademark a number... I'm having problems with this "D xxx" business, as it is just so snoozeworthy... so perhaps, they should use "Sexium" instead... the marketing guys could really pull the stops out with the "Sexium" name...

  • Ironic (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LunarOne ( 91127 )
    is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"
    Yes, it's both interesting and ironic that the Pentium name is more recognizable than Intel itself.
  • They should use a new name. Something like "viiv", where "vi" would be "6" and "iv" could be "4" adding up to "64" which could indicate a 64-bit CPU.

    Viva El VIIV!

  • Like Benz in Mercedes-Benz... (Score:3)

    by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:56AM (#14481282) Journal
    is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"

    If you already have the incredibly recognizable "Intel", "Pentium" is - at best - just a redundant add-on, like "Benz" in a "Mercedes-Benz". But at worst it creates an image of a company that lacks innovation. Just see how much more marketing value "Centrino" has over "Pentium M". I don't want to start the holy war here (and no, I'm not sitting with my freelance gig!), but AMD naming is a much better - AMD Duron just sounds better than Intel Pentium. The former evokes durability, the latter suggests that it's just a fifth generation of some product, leading to the inevitable question of shouldn't we proceed to sixth generation at long last?
    • "but AMD naming is a much better - AMD Duron just sounds better than Intel Pentium."

      and imagine all the equestrian freaks killing to get a Palomino CPU and then really soon upgrading to Thoroughbred :)
      I still pity myself over my Sempron. I WANT A PALOMINO!
  • Not only is Intel dropping their famous trademarks in favor of crypting moden numbers and letter sequences, but they've also decided to drop English and use Perl and Assembler to catter better to their core* audience.

    *Pardon for the pun.

  • Great. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EiZei ( 848645 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:57AM (#14481289)
    Now I'll probably have to figure out if some particular three-digit number is some stripped down budget processor instead of just seeing the word celeron or pentium.

  • Isn't this old news? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @09:57AM (#14481291)
    I clearly remember discussing this matter on Slashdot with others.

    Pentium was just a clever name for what would have been the 586... we're now many many generations out from there. Countlessly, really, since there are many Pentium 4/M/Xeon/Extreme Edition.

    Now that clock speeds aren't ramping up, you can't go 5GHz P4. Changing names is the only way to keep it semi-coherent.
  • I don't care about the logo. What I want to know is if they are dropping that stupid, rage-inducing jingle that they have been torturing the planet with for the last years. As far as I am concerned, that jingle alone is reason enough to buy an AMD instead of Intel -- it has gotten to the point where I switch channels the moment a TV ad for any computer hardware (except Apple, currently at least) starts so I don't have to hear those notes.

    I swear, if I ever kill somebody, my defense will be "the Intel jing

  • They've got a recognized brand name. They could probably tweak it, and not have to spend a billion dollars to make everyone know the new name. Instead the marketers win the day and get to make a new name and spend big money.

    This is the sort of expense that Google won't make.

    When I look at how they spend the money, I wish my fellow shareholders would ask that Intel act more like Google, and not blow our money.
  • Perhaps, but looking back over the years, IMO names like this don't make it very easy for people to see how the different products relate to one another -- which ones proceeded or succeeded the others. In fact, it's a good way to obfuscate a range of products. I think the old pre-Pentium names were much more descriptive. Besides, Intel have been using 'Pentium' for far too long. They could never bring themselves move on to Sextium (har-har), Septium, Octium or anything else; nothing seemed to be as catchy a
  • More than 11 years ago (nov '94) I happened to be the one to make the first public announcement of the Pentium FDIV bug, and over the next few weeks/months I also wrote most of the sw workaround (together with Cleve Moler, Tim Coe & Peter Tang).

    At the time I believed Intel would replace the Pentium name in time for the P6 (Hexium anyone?), but instead they started the long-running series of Pentium* processor families.

    Terje
  • We've been able to do 5+rev-1 for a decade now -- e.g. Pentium IV is really 5+4-1=8, which means i886. How will we ever keep track now?
  • Just like (mostly American) car manufacturers are introducing new models roughly fashioned on their old classics: the T-Bird, the Impala, the Mustang, GT-40, and about a dozen others. Prehaps in 20 years, if Intel is still in the game, they'll release a "New Processor with Classic Styling" and call it the Pentium. Do you think that, as with Cadillacs from the 60s, we'll be able to get away from having fins (i.e., heatsinks) on the back?

  • ... because "Pentium V" is redundant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Random BedHead Ed ( 602081 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:20AM (#14481405) Homepage Journal

    They had to drop the Pentium name, because it means "five." The first Pentium was the successor to the 486, and Intel decided to drop the numerical identification at least partly because they coudn't trademark it (you can't trademark numbers, IIRC). So the Pentium was the chip that would have been the 586.

    The name "Pentium V" or "Pentium 5" would have been a bit silly, so I don't blame them for dropping the name. But I'm very surprised they didn't develop a new brand identity. Do they even have a marketing department at Intel these days? Maybe, given someone else's recent successes in this market, they should just call their new processors "Athlon-compatible." :)

  • is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'

    Yea, because the intel logo, you know the one posted at the top of this article, doesn't have enough brand recognition. For a group of people who supposedly embrace change, sometimes these topic posters really are gun shy to it.
  • At the office:
    -Hey boss, I just called the third party that is providing us with the critical software we use, and they said that the next release will run on Intel D, but we have only Pentium 4...
    -Ok then, replace the 2000 workstations, I'm sure Dell or HP will have a good deal for us.
    -Yeah, they might even take back our old Pentium 4 at no charge!
  • ...and I thought the floating-point math errors were bad!

    =Smidge=
  • I kinda feel bad for the Intel marketing teams. They're actually very good at what they do -- but their R&D counterparts are not. Marketing is NOT fun when you are marking a piece of shit product. If I were in that situation for more than a year, I'd probably leave. There's only so much demoralization you can handle.

    2006 is going to continue the trends of demoralization at Intel. You think anyone inside is all revved up about this "Leap Ahead" bullcrap? Come on..

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I agree that it is about time to leave the pentium name. At some point it just gets old. And I have to admit that when I hear 'pentium', I still think of the original pentium. Or when I hear about the new pentium I think "how many pentiums have there been again?" The 'pentium' was meant to be the processor that followed the 486. Its just plain old.

    On the other hand, they really should come up w/ a new name. Call it the powerblock or the razorbeak or flubber. Whatever they want. But give it a new, i

  • Now that's one hell of a bra size! WOW.. Although with size D cup, that's gonna look very strange.

  • When you can't compete, be sneaky. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @10:58AM (#14481714) Homepage
    When I talk to Intel people, I get the impression that Intel is out of control. The most scary thing I have ever experienced is not horror films, but marketing departments like Intel's and Microsoft's that have so many people who are completely out of touch with the needs of their companies. They live in a weird disconnected world in which they fabricate fantasies about their own significance. I've met and talked with homeless people more in touch with reality than Intel or Microsoft marketing people.

    For example, on July 17, 2005 I got a message from Intel with the subject "Get an Intel(R) BunnyPeople(TM) Character when you Pass Three ICC Online Tests". Apparently someone at Intel thinks that I am immature enough to be motivated by a doll! Maybe there are people that immature, but I'll bet there are few immature people who have purchasing authority.

    On the other hand, I have found it impossible to get Intel to do anything right. The Intel people who aren't involved with the design of microprocessors have one "skill" in abundance: They have highly developed methods of avoiding work. I don't have time now to tell the stories about that. Here's only one:

    The Intel part number for Intel products was, at that time and probably now, not available anywhere on the public web site. So, if someone wanted to go to Fry's and be sure what they were getting, they would have no way of knowing what part number they wanted.

    At that time, there was a way to link Intel product names with Intel part numbers. It was necessary to get a secret password to a non-public Intel web site. I told several Intel marketing people how stupid that was. I got the standard stupid Intel marketing rationalizations about how they didn't need to do the work, or someone else was already doing it. (Which was not true.)

    The significance of dropping the Pentium name has nothing to do with the word Pentium. Intel marketing people are adopting ways of naming their microprocessors that provide no information whatsoever about what a prospective customer would be getting. Presumably that makes sense in the fantasy world in which they live. Sneaky behavior is considered smart in the fake world of Intel marketing; they believe they are so superior that they can play games and their customers won't notice.

    I forget right now who is CEO of Intel, but the Intel board of directors should fire him. He has no clue about how to build a sense of community.
  • I never understood the point of the "Intel Inside" logo anyway. If you're making a PC with second-rate parts, surely you would want to hide the fact, not announce it to the world. Imagine seeing on a restaurant menu, "Chili Con Carne made with Tesco Value Brand Minced Beef" ..... it's not exactly going to sell well, is it?
  • On the heels of the news of AMD outselling Intel in Desktop Retail sales for two consecutive months

    *mumble*excludingdell*mumble*

  • marketing changes as employees turnover (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Surt ( 22457 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @11:09AM (#14481818) Homepage Journal
    15 years ago one incredibly brilliant marketer at intel hit the peak of their career when they came up with the pentium brand and the branding strategy. That strategy has served intel incredibly well for a decade and a half. Meanwhile, younger marketers have all been chafing at the bit, waiting their turn to prove themselves working with one of the world's top brands, yet stifled by the incredible success of their predecessors. This change indicates that the people most attached to the pentium branding success have finally moved on, and this new naming system with no effective branding technique will no doubt in the long run be viewed as this new group of marketer's 'great mistake' and the disastrous failure of their careers.

    Kudos to Intel's outgoing marketing team, they had a marvelous run.

  • It's probably a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Solr_Flare ( 844465 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @11:33AM (#14481988)
    I realize the Pentium name is very recognizable but when you think about it, how many flavors of Pentiums are out there right now? A ton. So many that the name Pentium really has just been kept there for name's sake alone. I mean we have dual core pentiums, single core pentiums, pentium mobiles and that's just the most current generation, things are likely to grow worse in terms of diversity as time goes on.

    Yes, in the past when processors had a natural growth pattern of just speed increases it made sense to keep the name. But, these days the industry is moving more towards gradual speed increases coupled with other additional technologies/designs to improve the chip. When you reach the point where you have 15+ different 3ghz Pentiums and all operate at different performance levels, you're only really paying attention to the model number anyway at that point.

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