Core complications
Intel communications manager Bill Calder has posted an explanation of Intel's future CPU branding on the technology@Intel blog.
Core i7 is to be joined by Core i5 and Core i3, but Pentium and Celeron are still being kept going too. The Core brand is subdivided into entry-level (i3), mid-range (i5) and top-end (i7). By that logic, Pentium is now really entry-level and Celeron is really, really entry-level.
This means that brands like Core 2 Cuo and Core 2 Quad are going to be phased out over time, but no specific deadline seems to have been determined. We'll be seeing Core i5 later this year and Core i3 at the start of next year.
Centrino is also being scrapped as a PC brand and moved over to exclusively represent Intel's wireless technologies, including WiMAX. Intel's business brand - vPro - will continue to be used as a post-script for business designated platforms. These transitions are expected to kick in at the start of next year.
Back to the Core branding, Calder stressed that they're not actually brands, but modifiers. Mere semantics you might think, but he made this point to stress that some CPUs, like the impending Lynnfield launch "will be available as either Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 depending upon the feature set and capability."
Atom appears to be unaffected by all this and there is a bit more information on this available on the Intel website. And don't forget, there's also the star system unveiled in April.
Has Intel succeeded in simplifying its CPU offering or do you think it could have gone further? Let us know what you think in the HEXUS.community discussion forums.
