Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

https://boringtextreviews.com/2023/04/30/intel-to-drop-the-i-moniker-in-upcoming-cpu-rebrand/

by albert-thomas • 3 years ago

86 129 3 years ago

Er… what? As they say in the comments, they’re getting hammered by AMD… so throw away the brand recognition?

I personally never understood why they didn’t spread it to all their lines. Their GPU line could have been the G3, G5, and G7; SSDs could have been S3, S5, and S7; Wi-Fi could have been W3, W5, and W7; and Chipsets could have been C3, C5, and C7. Oh well…

djbusby• 3 years ago

You gotta do more than practical to impress the VPs and Board. Do some sillyness, point to line go up, promotion!

kibwen• 3 years ago

I think this is overestimating the amount of "brand recognition" that Intel gets out of the "i". Ordinary consumers don't give a damn about it whatsoever, hell, I guarantee 99% of ordinary people don't even know which manufacturer produced the CPU on any given device that they own.

Meanwhile, enthusiasts will roll their eyes and use whatever dumb naming scheme Intel replaces it with. It was terribly convoluted before, and it will certainly be terribly convoluted after. This is a non-event.

opportune4• 3 years ago

Personally I think the i-N naming convention (and Ryzen naming convention for that matter) may have slightly hurt sales of the higher performance i-3 chips, which could be better than even midrange i-<5-9> chips for specific or general scenarios.

If I were branding chips I’d do some combination of core count, clock speed (yes I know performance is much more complicated), chip type/power requirements/specialization, and iteration. Like I have no idea how to compare an i3-4971058373 to an i7-5927263849. I can much more easily compare an i6L-36v2 (six core, 3.6 GHz, laptop thermals/power, second version) to an i8D-38v1. And even more importantly I can seek out SKUs according to my requirements rather than having to go through multiple third party websites doing the work of cataloguing/comparing specs and explaining wtf each sku is.

qwytw• 3 years ago

I guarantee 99% of ordinary people don't even know which manufacturer produced the CPU on any given

If you define 'ordinary people' as people who don't know what CPU their PC has you'll be right. But I generally I'd assume most people who buy their devices themselves might have some understanding about i3 < i5 < i7

internet2000• 3 years ago

The “i” branding is extremely powerful with the average consumer and removing it is bound to cause confusion amongst consumers who aren’t technically-inclined.

There's no way this is true. The iNumbers were never used consistently enough to mean anything.

ethbr03• 3 years ago

When they were first released they were.

i3: single core, hyperthreading

i5: multi core, no hyperthreading

i7: multi core, hyperthreading

It only jumped the shark once hyperthreading stopped being a differentiating feature, and Intel tried to retcon equivalent performance levels into their previous numbering system.

Edit: Nehalem (~2008). Apparently i3 didn't exist until the Westmere die shrink?

deaddodo• 3 years ago

This was true for only the first generation (Nehalem):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)

And they didn't even have an i3 model. What you refer to as the i3 above was still branded as "Celeron". The immediate successor (Westmere) didn't follow this convention at all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmere_(microarchitecture)

All of the i3 and i5s of that generation were MC+SMT.

Dylan168074• 3 years ago

Huh? From the very start through gen 7 the tiers were 2 cores with hyperthreading, 4 without, 4 with. And sometimes more at the very top, in different forms.

The first two generations of core processors had a different pattern, but those were "core [2] solo/duo/quad", they had no i and no tier numbers.

(And before that was pentium 4/D.)

klodolph2• 3 years ago

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

gjsman-10003• 3 years ago

This is especially true after the last few years of CPU innovation. A 2023 Core i3-13100 beats a 2018 Core i7-8700K, at least in Passmark, in single and multi.

Let alone a 2009 Core i7…

leidenfrost• 3 years ago

... looks like I'll need to upgrade the CPU soon lol

MBCook6• 3 years ago

I kind of like what Nvidia has been doing in GPUs. They have series. 1000s, 2000s, 3000s. Each generate is a new series.

Then the products inside seem to be in performance order. A 3080 is better than a 3060 is better than a 3020 (if that exists).

I know it gets messier than that. The fact that they add the titanium versions kind of screws with it. And in the last year they had that card they had to renumber because a change to its memory configuration (?) made it perform wrong for its moniker.

But at least you know a 3080 is two generations newer than a 1080. Compared to the seemingly random numbers on CPUs it’s simple.

userbinator4• 3 years ago

But at least you know a 3080 is two generations newer than a 1080.

That's similar to what Intel was doing with the numbers following the i{3,5,7,9}:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_processors

klodolph2• 3 years ago

The problem with Nvidia is that I blinked and the numbers wrapped around, so a GeForce RTX 4070 is really new, but a GeForce FX 5200 is really old.

p1necone3• 3 years ago

You've touched on the main problem (imo) that seems to happen with large hardware companies adopting consistent naming for performance segments in your comment. Once you've got a sane naming scheme and you've used it for a few generations the incentive to use it to mislead consumers is very high.

Why sell this generations X070 equivalent as an x070 when you can call it an x080 instead and know that a very large chunk of your customer base wont look at the actual specs before paying an extra ~$100 for it? Probably not good in the long term, but who cares about the long term when you can boost sales numbers on a new product now and make shareholders happy.

leetcrew2• 3 years ago

But at least you know a 3080 is two generations newer than a 1080. Compared to the seemingly random numbers on CPUs it’s simple.

CPU SKUs work exactly the same way? intel has gone longer than nvidia without restarting the numbering, so they need two digits instead of one.

modeless• 3 years ago

If you think Nvidia's product naming makes any kind of sense, try a few rounds of my GPU quiz: https://james.darpinian.com/gpu-quiz.html

Infernal• 3 years ago

It sounds like the real issue here with Intel is they got it backwards. Nvidia leads with the generation (2xxx, 3xxx) and then differentiates within the generation (xx60, xx80). Intel leads with the intra-gen differentiation (i5, i7 etc.) which is most often included in marketing, with the generation buried in the particular CPU model number that often isn't included (10xxx, 11xxx).

It doesn't help that there's also a random mix of river codenames and I can never keep straight which number they belong to.

abricot• 3 years ago

It's not just the Titanium, they have also launched 1650 and 1660 in between the 20s and 30s generation, and then you have the SUPER, TI and Foundation models.

AMD could also do better.

leetcrew2• 3 years ago

the leading digits of the SKU get bumped with every generation. this is the same pattern used by nvidia and amd for their gpus and cpus. it's only slightly more opaque than model years for cars.

I've also heard people say things like "my PC has an i7" without understanding the generational context, but the intersection between this group and the population that actually buys individual computer parts is approximately null. it's a lot harder to figure out chipset compatibility than it is to figure out that a 2700k is separated from a 13700k by more than ten years.

rdtsc• 3 years ago

there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

Since switching to laptops from building my own PCs from parts I stopped following CPU models directly. I knew i3 was "weaker" than i5, and i5 "weaker" than i7. But remember getting an "i5" 10 years and they are still selling them. Shouldn't it be up to i15 by now? It would have been better to have some suffix or prefix letters "Pro", or "Super" to indicate tiers.

wmf2• 3 years ago

BMW is also still selling the 5 series.

opportune4• 3 years ago

Exactly, I wish their naming conventions were more literate/descriptive than they are now. The names of two processors tells you almost nothing regarding how they compare to each other. And I mean, marketing actual specs runs the risk of oversimplifying performance but also, as a consumer I don’t want to go to some benchmarking site or load multiple different pages of specs just to understand the difference between two SKUs - having to do that actually makes it harder for intel to market and differentiate their chips because it shifts the job to third parties who will also compare them to AMD, not explain why the benchmark fails to capture that chipX has laptop thermals, etc

Intel’s branding was particularly bad in that i9 usually indicated higher performance than eg i3, but old i9s could be much worse than newer i7s (or even i5/3) and it was hard to distinguish them. And new i3s could be the most performant or efficient choice for some consumers over an i9 sometimes; shitty i3s made the good i3s also look bad.

It seems simple to use a naming convention embedding stuff like node/process/fab provenance, cores, clock, specialization or thermals, version… it’s a lot easier to understand basic differences between an Intel-L7n8c35H.2 (laptop, 7nm, 8 core, 3.5 GHz, version 2) and an Intel-D5n12c38H.1 even if it doesn’t capture every distinction.

gonzo41• 3 years ago

You think this is bad, never own a bicycle. My god the confusion. I just wish all manufactures would name the product generation, and then incrementally increase numbers in the range based on quality and spec. Skylake-1 (basic) Skylike-1000 (really good) etc. Especially for chips, it seems the current naming specs across industry is needless complexity.

Macha3• 3 years ago

The other thing the bike manufacturers seem to do is bump the year number of the model with no real changes. The. You get situations where the 2018, 2019, 2020 difer only by paint job, then switch from a 2x8 to 1x12 gear setup, and then the 2021, 2022, 2023 are back to differing by paint job only again.

I guess it's them trying to incentise buying new in an industry that's much more slow moving than PC parts.

gambiting4• 3 years ago

I can maybe accept that argument, but their new branding (according to the article) definitely won't help with that. Intel Ultra 5 1003H?

At a glance, how is that different to relatively recent Intel i5 10030H???

wilg• 3 years ago

I agree it made no sense to me when building a PC for the first time.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

F150, f250, f350.

i"X" is the tier, and the number after that hints at generation and rank.

There may be better ways of doing it but it isn't hard to figure out for someone who needs to know.

otterpro• 3 years ago

I see a lot of Ebay listing selling pc with "intel i5 CPU" without description with the exact CPU model #, so I have no idea whether I'm dealing with 4th gen i5 or 8th gen i5. It's confusing to less technical buyers who think they are getting a mid-level CPU only to find out that their CPU is not as good as expected. It'd be nice to have just the number, like 13900k, which makes more sense than i7-13900k.

vanviegen• 3 years ago

They could prefix the i with the generation year, to make it somewhat meaningful. "I have a 23i5" would tell most of what you'd need to know to figure out how well it's going to run a certain piece of software. It's also clear that a 29i5 should be a lot faster and more featureful. (Perhaps I should upgrade!) You'd still have to dive into the details to weigh a 23i5 against a 25i3 though.

For the complete SKU some more jibberisch can of course be added. Like 25i7-32mg. This suffix could be generation specific though, allowing for some flexibility. Most people wouldn't need to care.

jzb• 3 years ago

“The “i” branding is extremely powerful with the average consumer and removing it is bound to cause confusion amongst consumers who aren’t technically-inclined.”

Who’s the “average” consumer here? I’m skeptical that the majority of PC buyers have internalized the “i” branding. Gamers, sure. But average consumers? I’ve talked a number of less computer savvy friends and family through computer purchases and there was awareness of Intel, but beyond that not so much.

I don’t think a rebrand is going to change much for Intel either way. Average consumers are either going to buy by price point and familiar brand (Lenovo, Dell, etc.) or phone a friend to get advice. Or use whatever they get handed by their employer.

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

“The “i” branding is extremely powerful with the average consumer and removing it is bound to cause confusion amongst consumers who aren’t technically-inclined.”

I feel like you're either in one of two groups:

1. a PC "nerd" (kind of deragotory) who is obsessed with specs all the way down to things like L2 cache size, etc.

2. somebody who has 0 clue what any computer/laptop specification means whatsoever

MBCook6• 3 years ago

somebody who has 0 clue what any computer/laptop specification means whatsoever

Life was so easy in the MHz-wars days.

The bigger number was basically always better, and you could easily tell by how much.

izoow• 3 years ago

There’s also the “average PC gamer” that has some clue about computer parts, but wouldn’t be able to tell you what something like L2 cache is. I’d say that’s quite a large part of the consumer base as well.

MBCook6• 3 years ago

While somewhat ridiculous, I kind of feel like they might’ve been better off if they were currently selling the Pentium 17.

Anyone can look at 17 and compare it to the number on their older computer (say Pentium 14) and know it’s better.

Apple is doing this right so far with the M chips, but they’re about to be on #3. We’ll see how long they stick with it. They have so far in phones.

userbinator4• 3 years ago

Apple is doing this right so far with the M chips

These?

    M1
    M1 Pro
    M1 Max
    M1 Ultra
    M2 Pro
    M2 Max

Besides the non-numerical suffixes being harder to sort, it still doesn't make it easy to compare performance between them at a glance. I will give them credit for not adding unnecessary "padding zeros", however.

faeriechangling2• 3 years ago

Apple is not doing it right.

You have the "MacBook Pro with M1 Pro" which makes my eyebrow twitch.

You also have the "M1 Max" which is lower grade than the "M1 Ultra". Despite it you know, being the MAX.

I will say that this branding while uncharacteristically sloppy for Apple, is better than bullshit like the "Intel Platinum i6-43065GF Extreme edition" which is simply incomprehensible to the untrained eye while the trained eyes roll in the back of their skulls.

Macha3• 3 years ago

The thing is that these companies have so many SKUs because they're trying to address so many market segments and so newer is not always automatically better. Then technology (and competition) advances at an uneven pace so you end up with some generations (2 -> 3, 6 -> 7, 10 -> 11) where the generational difference is "who cares", and some generations (9 -> 10, 11 -> 12) where basically the entire old generation is obsolete.

Apple is tackling an easier problem since they're focusing on subdivisions of the high margin premium consumer segment. But there's a world of difference between the €1400 base model m1 macbook air and the €550 windows machines the standard consumer here buys. A lot of Apple's target market looks at the €1400 MBA doing quite well against comparably priced windows machines (well as long as you aren't gaming, running legacy business applications, or actually in need of more than 8gb of RAM), and sees the €950 price difference to what people actually buy as irrelevant, but for e.g. my parents that pays for their next laptop in a decade too.

Once you're into that price sensitive market, you end up needing from a business imperative that smattering of SKUs, since the person selling a €600 laptop wants something they can point to as better than the €550 laptop and at that market, people are not buying €50 for lighter or more aesthetically appealing laptops. Then a sort of mirror happens at the high end since it's users buying CPUs directly and therefore more informed so it's not as easy to just make some tiers and extract maximum consumer surplus for the higher tiers.

opportune4• 3 years ago

With the i branding, a desktop vendor could sell an “i9” using a less performant, old i9 chip that could perform much worse than a new i5. Conversely some i3 chips are rather good but at a glance a consumer will think they are too low-end. This is bad for Intel, a consumer may buy an i9 machine and think “wow, this is terrible for a highend chip, Intel really sucks” because it was a bad i9 or prefer a worse-suited i5 over an i3 due to assuming 5>3.

I’d prefer a more literate convention I described in other comments, but the new convention may at least prevent reductively bucketing skus. The old buckets were just descriptive enough to suggest a quality and performance hierarchy, but dangerously so, because even a 3 could be better than a 9 in some cases.

faeriechangling2• 3 years ago

I'm inclined to agree. Intel's iX branding sort of make sense at one point, i3 meant entry level/budget, i5 was mainstream, i7 was enthusiast.

Except actually Celeron was entry level, and i3 was entrish-level. Also i7 wasn't enthusiast, no you needed an i9 processor to be a REAL enthusiast. Also now mainstream tasks can run just fine on the i3's if not the Celeron chips.

I long thought their branding was over-convoluted MBA mess which was overdue for some simplification.

nikodunk• 3 years ago

That leaves us with Intel 3, Intel 5 and Intel 7, which is quite strong IMO because it drops the i sub-brand?

userbinator4• 3 years ago

Setting the stage for the Intel 11, because it goes to 11.

Arrath• 3 years ago

*Liquid Nitrogen cooling apparatus not included

klyrs• 3 years ago

Nothing says executive floundering quite like blowing millions on a rebrand. Here's an idea: make it a new product, a good one, and give that a different name.

technocratius• 3 years ago

Depends on what you consider a "new" product though. Intel makes CPUs, and if you look at it from an architectural perspective it's quite reasonable to say that every generation is a new product. But I guess you could argue that when the core functionality (CPU) stays the same (as opposed to changing it to e.g. an APU), the product stays the same...

MBCook6• 3 years ago

I’ve been out of the enthusiast game since the P4.

I understand that an i5 is better than an i3 and worse than an i7.

Outside of that I’m totally lost. Different core counts, different kinds of cores, multiple clock speeds (minimum, normal, max, ultra-boost), etc. and of course a current i3 probably destroys an older i7 in benchmarks.

GPUs aren’t quite as bad. A 3060 is better than a 2060, but is a 3060 better than a 2080ti?

But I find CPUs (when I see model numbers mentioned) totally inscrutable.

I don’t know if the i-series names are valuable. The last Intel name I really remember is the Core 2 Duo name. i3 is no where near as memorable.

Whatever they do, I hope they find a way to make their various lines and models easier to understand. I know that’s difficult for a company like Intel with such a huge line up of products.

precompute• 3 years ago

I understand that an i5 is better than an i3 and worse than an i7.

That isn't always true. It's pushed by intel as a "handy reference" for specifications, when it's actually just a price bracket. Many noobs will see it as a three-level hierarchy and conclude that they need an i7 for their mundane office work, when a pentium would have sufficed.

You gotta read and understand the specifications.

AMD has an actually useful naming spec for their processors, unlike intel.

tadfisher• 3 years ago

I have a Core i3 that supports ECC memory, for example. The contemporary i5 and i7 models did not. Baffling, somewhat.

bluedino2• 3 years ago

Wait until you get to the Xeons. Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

ddtaylor3• 3 years ago

Can we just go back to numbers where higher is always better?

rincebrain• 3 years ago

Well, if we have 32 cores at 2 GHz, and 48 cores at 1.5 GHz, from the same chip architecture, which is better?

For some workloads, it's one; for others, it's the other.

A one-dimensional performance axis is hard in practice.

MBCook6• 3 years ago

You could use a synthetic benchmark. Create your own Geekbench like thing and use those numbers.

Intel-$singlecore-$multicore

So an Intel-6-12 had twice the single core performance of the Intel-3-48 but is much worse in multicore.

Yeah, things are WAY more complicated. But at least it gives you a chance without memorizing spec sheets first. Higher numbers are always better. No redefining. This year’s 5 can’t be better than last year’s 20 in performance.

I don’t follow Intel/AMD chips anymore. If I wanted to buy a computer I’d have to learn it all from scratch. This would give me a nice leg up.

atmavatar• 3 years ago

For some reason, that comparison reminds me of:

"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"

-Seymour Cray

opportune4• 3 years ago

You can’t preserve ordering mapping permutations of a high-dimensional space (specs: clock rate, power, cores, cache, pipelining/vectorization, etc) with another high dimensional space (benchmarks, workloads, and scenarios) to a single number. It’s possible even for a chip with superior numerical specs across the board from another chip to perform worse due to lack of support for specialized instructions or differences in thermals.

ddtaylor3• 3 years ago

Almost every other industry makes some kind of attempt to do exactly that because consumers want simple choices.

yk• 3 years ago

Sounds like someone is getting an earful for not checking the branding guideline's spelling while "leaking."

ksec• 3 years ago

I wish Intel get back to the absolute basic. Great Products, Easy to understand spec numbers, less artificial market segmentation ( apart from optimising for yield ).

UberFly• 3 years ago

That site is really good. Definitely speed dial worthy - thanks for the story. About dropping the "i" - I think Intel is in need of a refresh and a new name wouldn't hurt the brand as a whole. I just hope they'd come up with something sensible and easy for the consumer to understand.

andrewstuart• 3 years ago

The technical term for this is "debranding", which is when a company doesn't believe there is significant value left in its core brand.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

Intel Core 3 Duo?

Maursault• 3 years ago

This strategy isn't going to work. Dropping the moniker isn't going to make any difference. They need to drop the platform. Until they do, they'll never catch up to Apple. Intel has been pwned by Apple since 2020, and that trend will only continue if Intel keeps on beating their dead horse. This is ridiculous, the kind of decision-making that killed Sun, and obviously the brain child of some ambitious MBA.

borissk• 3 years ago

Haha, you're an Apple fanboy. Intel CPUs are more than fast enough for current software. Just today I took out of storage an almost 5 year old laptop (a Dell Precision) with Intel i7-8750h (6 cores, 12 threads) and 32GB RAM. Put in a new SSD (Samsung 980 Pro) and it flies with Windows 10 - browsing, watching 4K movies, using JetBrains WebStorm with a fairly large TypeScript project all work perfectly well and the laptop is completely silent. There is no noticeable difference between this laptop and my desktop with i5-13600K.

iSheeple usually compare M1 and M2 laptops with Apple's old Intel based laptops and not with current Intel and AMD mobile processors - which are completely competitive in terms of performance.

saagarjha• 3 years ago

Responding to a “fanboy” with “iSheeple” doesn’t really win you any credibility.

andromeduck2• 3 years ago

Battery life and thermals are much better on M1.

It's also that Intel laptops are pretty trash in general especially at equivalent price points vs what apple offers. Not everyone needs or wants it all buy you want really good quality, screen/keyboard/trackpad build quality/acoustics apple is pretty much the only choice out there.

lostgame• 3 years ago

'iSheeple'

cringes

You had some credibility up until then...

mikelward• 3 years ago

The original article uses lowercase "i", which is much clearer than the title here.

gambiting4• 3 years ago

Brands are just going bananas trying to get rid of their own identity for some reason. It's the same as Land Rover(JLR) announcing that they won't call their cars land rover anymore, "because customers find it confusing". Apparently according to their spokesperson "no one says they own a Land Rover Defender, it's just a Defender". Like.....everyone ok in the head over there at the HQ?

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

Fundamental shifts in the market -- i.e. the "K shaped recovery" where the poor got poorer and the rich got much richer -- require brands to start recalculating who and what they're marketing.

A race to the bottom but also a race to the top, and requirements to re-shape what those brands mean as they reach to those segments. Definitely an issue for a luxury brand, too.

corbulo3• 3 years ago

Its a lot like movie studios making sequels without subtext or numbers to have a 'cleaner' title.

Really bizarre practice that doesn't actually make it easier for the consumer, as the year of release becomes the number instead.

spacebanana7• 3 years ago

Similar to Yves Saint Laurent dropping the "Yves"

wruza• 3 years ago

As someone who didn’t know but then learned it, I don’t think it is a good idea. Naive people say “I have i7”, so what? All enthusiasts refer to model numbers like 12700k. i-notation is useful in a “today” context like “recent i7” or “compared to previous i7”. This is exactly what less savvy consumers want when buying a modern pc. Latest-ish i-something to do-something like gaming, video editing or spreadsheets.

simula67• 3 years ago

I think we are now conditioned to think that higher numbers are 'better' or 'continuations' of lower numbers. For example, "Back to the Future: 3" movie is a continuation of the story of the movie "Back to the Future: 2". Similarly, Windows version 3 is the new and improved version of Windows Version 2.

It seems that marketing executives have forgotten that part of their jobs is to ensure that they communicate product qualities accurately to consumers.

Google is one of the worst offenders in this, with their madness over naming. Is Nexus 5X an earlier version of Nexus 6? No? It denotes the size of the screen? What exactly is a Pixel? Phone? Tablet? Notebook? What does Chromecast have to do with Chrome?

I always though Intel is a close second. There can be better names for Intel processor lines:

i3: Mobile

i5: Balanced

i7: Professional

i9: Creative/Graphics

There may be better approximations of course. But ideally if a product is targetted at a segment, it should be made clear in the brand name. Generations can be mentioned as suffix: p13 would be 13th generation of Professional, m5 would be 5th generation of mobile.

Apple does a good job of this with their Mac lines:

Air: Ultraportable

Pro: Creatives/Professional users

M1, M2 etc: higher is always better.

People don't want to feel ripped off, so I am sure that the clear communication from the Apple marketing team provides a significant tailwind to their sales team.

void-pointer• 3 years ago

Apple understood this from the word go and I don’t understand why everyone else is struggling so much:

  M       1     Pro
  ^       ^      ^
  Form    Gen   Intra-gen
  Factor        Differentiator

Admittedly, the Pro/Max/Ultra names are arbitrary, but it’s still easier to pronounce and understand than “Intel Core i9-10900K”

SlackingOff123• 3 years ago

Yes, but each intel CPU generation has more than 3 models. Having arbitrary names for 12 (?) models would just be silly.

Macha3• 3 years ago

    i5       10     700k
     ^       ^      ^
    Bracket  Gen    In gen differentiator

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

The K also has a meaning: in this case, that the processor is unlocked

Ekaros• 3 years ago

i3, i5, i7 and i9 really aren't so bad. Just need to consider words following that is generation X. Later generation usually better. Bigger numbers generally better.

PedroBatista• 3 years ago

I think Intel branding is the least of their problems and it’s not the reason why people aren’t buying their CPUs.

bfrog• 3 years ago

No one really does a nice job of this, once the marketing department gets hold its all "super/ultra/maximum/titanium/silver/gold/plantinum/diamond" etc

These words have lost all meaning. No its not just Intel, its literally every single consumer cpu and gpu maker.

abudabi123• 3 years ago

Associate each product with three names targeting the market segment that is classy:tea, classless:water, crass:fizzypop-zerosugar. The regulator should assign a grid coordinate for the product to locate its absolute/relative performance. ARM seems to have a meaningful naming scheme a:application, r:i-forget, m:mobile.

corbulo3• 3 years ago

The tech hardware industry generally has terrible marketing. Look at laptop SKUs. None of them are effective at delineating product tiers in an easy to understand way. Even Apple post-Jobs is bad at this: wtf is an air vs pro vs just 'mac' or 'macbook'? What in the hell is an ultra max?

As someone who keeps tabs on the products I can pretty quickly get an intuition for what they mean, but the semantics do no favors. They're just placeholders for 'better' and 'best' when used in various combinations. But once you stop labeling the base model (such as plainly 'Macbook') you're not qualifying what the marketing term is trying to convey (what is it 'better' than?). 'Air' as opposed to...? 'Pro' compared to...a product you no longer sell? 'Ultra' or 'Plus' for phones but 'Pro' for desktop OSs?

If you tried to chart out the marketing terms used in the tech hardware industry it would look like the Always Sunny Charlie Conspiracy meme.

tibbydudeza• 3 years ago

M1 or Pro or Ultra

Simple really.

bluedino2• 3 years ago

Here's my question. Why are there SO MANY PROCESSOR SKUs?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/platforms/d...

I lost count at 75 SKUs for Cascade Lake. Do we need 2-core increments? Do we need 0.2 GHz increments? Is this just part of the binning process? Wouldn't it make it easier for everyone if they had 1/4 the amount?

I'm trying to think of the amount of manhours wasted in meetings where IT staff debate 16-core vs 18-core and 20-core, alonge with 2.1GHz vs 2.3Ghz and 2.5GHz, when all the CPU's are within $100 of each other.

I think back to the Pentium days when you'd only have a handful of clockspeeds and then something new (like MMX), or a new socket would come out and then you'd get a couple more chips.

corbulo3• 3 years ago

Could it be a result of the manufacturing process? To my layman understanding, not all silicon is created equal.

MichaelZuo2• 3 years ago

You answered the question already. Binning.

NBJack3• 3 years ago

It does raise an interesting question: is the 'spectrum' bigger because marketing wanted to capitalize, or is it a bigger range of outcomes on chips due to the progression of shrinking fab sizes?

gumby• 3 years ago

Good they are dropping this confusing naming system.

As usual, Apple does it so much better. It’s just a MacBook Air, except in the documentation it’s “Macbook Air Late 2019” except when you ask the machine itself it uses yet another name.

Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

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