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Intel Businesses Hardware

Intel To Launch New Core Processor Branding for Meteor Lake: Drop the i, Add Ultra Tier (anandtech.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
As first hinted at by Intel back in late April, Intel is embarking on a journey to redefine its client processor branding, the biggest such shift in the previous 15 years of the company. From a report: Having already made waves by altering its retail packaging on premium desktop chips such as the Core i9-11900K and Core i9-12900K, the tech giant aims to introduce a new naming scheme across its client processors, signaling a transformative phase in its client roadmap. This shift is due to begin in the second half of the year, when Intel will launch their highly anticipated Meteor Lake CPUs. Meteor Lake represents a significant leap forward for the company in regards to manufacturing, architecture, and design -- and, it would seem, is prompting the need for a fresh product naming convention.

The most important changes include dropping the 'i' from the naming scheme and opting for a more straightforward Core 3, 5, and 7 branding structure for Intel's mainstream processors. The other notable inclusion, which is now officially confirmed, is that Intel will bifurcate the Core brand a bit and place its premium client products in their own category, using the new Ultra moniker. Ultra chips will signify a higher performance tier and target market for the parts, and will be the only place Intel uses their top-end Core 9 (previously i9) branding.
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Intel To Launch New Core Processor Branding for Meteor Lake: Drop the i, Add Ultra Tier More

Intel To Launch New Core Processor Branding for Meteor Lake: Drop the i, Add Ultra Tier

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  • Sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)

    by boudie2 ( 1134233 ) on Thursday June 15, 2023 @10:14AM (#63604986)
    Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

  • Apple is using 'Max' and 'Ultra' in their own branding, for their ARM processors. They've been doing this for, what, two years? So why is Intel using the exact same word now?

    I guess other words were just too ugly or tainted? "Super"? "Mega"? "Uber"?!?

    I never liked Intel's names, honestly. We know processors have cores, no need to put that word in the name too...

  • Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zibodiz ( 2160038 ) on Thursday June 15, 2023 @10:22AM (#63605004) Homepage
    Intel's naming system is a mess, and this change isn't enough to correct the issue. Back when I had a retail store, customers were often confused by the plethora of options. Several times, customers would recall the marketing from 20 years ago, and assume the Pentium was still the top product.
    My explanation was always a car analogy; The Atom is like a scooter, the Celeron is the Geo Metro, the Pentium is the slightly larger economy sedan, a Core i3 is your typical comfortable car, the i5 is the sporty version of that car, the i7 is a Corvette, and the i9 is a Ferrari. Then you have the business-class chips that are more like dump trucks, and are best ignored by the average consumer.
    That's a mess. I'm not a marketer, so I couldn't say what should be done, but I'm positive that this isn't it.

    • Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mrfaithful ( 1212510 ) on Thursday June 15, 2023 @11:06AM (#63605162)

      The market for shit laptops is too large to ignore and Intel's failure bin too brimming with potentially sellable products. HP, Acer, et. al. are all too happy to create barely usable tier SKUs to meet market demand and Intel has to figure out what to call their latest batch of not-capable-of-being-an-i3 so that it sounds like you're getting something usable for your money.

      • IMO, intel really screwed up in making the entire 'atom' line as first class desktop/laptop chips. Those $299 best buy/walmart laptops, they're just terrible. They may have made a bunch of money on it, but the brand is no longer the premium it once was. Now they're compared to Apple's chips which are great, but intel still holds the performance crown at the upper end and AMD is right in there. It's intel's fault that they are being talked about as being the slower chip maker because of those junky chip

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Pentium and Celeron need to be fully retired, for all products. And change the numbering to go 1-9. With the low-end chips being 1-3, good 4 & 5, Consumer 6-8, and Gamer/Enthusiast at 9. It would be really easy to understand for consumers, higher number = better.

      • Well, that could be confusing as well. If we stick with car analogies, many people have been trained that odd numbers are sedans and even numbers are coups.

        But seriously, I'm kind of surprised that Intel is dropping the "i" because it would complicate trademark protection. You usually can't trademark just a number, and "Core" is a very generic term in the field of CPUs. (In fact, I always thought that naming processors "Core", where core doesn't indicate the number of CPU cores, was utterly stupid. It would

        • But seriously, I'm kind of surprised that Intel is dropping the "i" because it would complicate trademark protection.

          This. We had/have “Pentium” specifically because Intel was unable to trademark “486” and the competition had been using the same number. It almost seems like Intel’s IP lawyers forgot their own past.

          • They should have continued with that. Pentium, Exium, Heptium, Octium, Nonium, Decium, Endecium, Dodecium, Decatrium...

    • sure, they've used MAX in handsets as well, not directly on the A series silicon but adjacent to it.

      I was always annoyed at the many layers in the intel name. core, core 2, core i5 1105u, then the many confabulations of the like i-core-5 and i5 core and core 2 i5 and so on used by 'tech' guys. An odd mix of the utilitarian naming and marketing just. I felt the same way when AMD couldn't figure out how many ways to name Athlon series chips. athlon, 2, 64, 64x2, XP, M, LMNPO and add some numbers on the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )

      "Core" was an arbitrary holdover from the chip generation that saved Intel from the P4 tarpit, and the "i" is meaningless (when it's not an Apple product, lol). I would suggest change "Core" to "Intel", and change the letter for different lines, like "s" or "x" for server chips. The "i" is okay just because it's been there so long. Then do something about the Celeron and Pentium branding for shit that isn't even up to i3 level.

      So something like "Intel i3/i5/i7" for mainstream chips, "Intel Max i9" for powe

  • opting for a more straightforward Core 3, 5, and 7 branding structure

    You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

    Changing something arbitrarily after over a decade of use in every corner of your product line is confusing, not straightforward. It will not help your brand. It will hurt your brand. Nobody is going to confuse Team Blue for Team Red and give you the business you lost because you drop the 'i' from the product name. At least, nobody who knows enough to need to buy a standalone processor.

    • From what I can tell AMD copied Intel a little bit using numbers after the Ryzen naming to mirror what Intel in signifying different consumer processors in the same generation. Ryzen 3 was the same Core i3 as it was the lowest tier in terms of capability and price. Ryzen 9 and Core i9 is the top tier of processors. The numbering in the same tier told consumers (more or less) which specific processor was more capable. Core i7 12800 is supposed to be more capable than a Core i7 12700 and a Ryzen 7 5800 is bet

  • I am going to buy RTX 4070ti in second half of this year and I most likely I'll reuse my existing motherboard and its intel chip, since it does not make any difference, what intel processor you are using. Intel plays the same role as north bridge on the motherboard played 15 years ago. All these efforts to rebrand North Bridge into something meaningful is just waste of time and money.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • That's a lot of talking with very little substance. Why don't you do some research on Wikipedia, and the web to understand the internal architecture of each of Intel's generations then you can spout off about it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      Used to be that each generation was basically a new compatible chip. The 286 added protected mode and capability of 16 MB of memory. The 386 was a 32 bit chip, flat memory capable of addressing 4 GB. The 486 doubled the speed per Mhz and added the math co-processor and some instructions and hardware for supporting 2 chips (SMP). The 586 (Pentium) was super-scalar (had pipeline and doubled the speed again). The 686 (Pentium Pro) 50% faster per clock and a different super-scalar design. These came in variatio

  • opting for a more straightforward Core 3, 5, and 7 branding structure

    If anything, the scheme is more convoluted.

    They dropped an i from the name across the board. They also said not to say, e.g., 12 twice anymore.

    Meanwhile, they introduce an 'ultra 5 7 9' as wall as plain old '3 5 7'.

    So they took their overly complicated product family and made it more complicated, but claim to have simplified by... deleting an i?

  • Drop the I? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Thursday June 15, 2023 @11:46AM (#63605280)
    So it's "ntel" now?

  • Harder to google? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Thursday June 15, 2023 @12:53PM (#63605472)

    As silly as i3, i5, i7, and i9 were, at least if you typed them into a search engine you'd get some useful links.

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  • "How many cores does your Core 9 have?"
    "Uh, 12."

    Core made a lot of sense when it came out - when dual core CPUs were the thing.

    Their branding has been increasingly confusing, with (largely obfuscated) model and revision numbers. The coding hasn't even been consistent for chip suffixes.

    Perhaps if they'd focus on their technology (you know, their 'core competency') instead of bleeding everyone with a broadly stratified binning money extraction approach, they'd be doing better at not having Apple and AMD eatin

  • I mean we want lots of numbers with zero context here... I want to confuse my GPU with my CPU when I only use model numbers.

  • Larry rubs his hands together in anticipation...

  • Sigh (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    How many cores.
    How fast.
    What kind of intended usage.

    That's all I need. And the new naming scheme gives nothing of that.

    I gave up trying to understand chip model numbers entirely years ago, I just go straight to a spec-sheet and read off what it can do. Nobody who cares is looking at the model number, and those that don't care (e.g. most consumers)... don't care.

    When I need a line like this:

    Intel Xeon Silver 4314 2.4G, 16C/32T, 10.4GT/s, 24M Cache, Turbo, HT (135W) DDR4-2666

    Just to tell what the processor

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