First listings in databases, then an official confirmation from Intel’s Director of Corporate Communications, Bernard Fernandes. It is already known that Intel will change the naming of its processors. Now have another official confirmation or more details.
The reason for the new name is a major change in chip design – from architecture to packaging to new functions.
First of all, the “i” will disappear in the future. Core i7 becomes Core 7, Core i3, Core 3, etc. Intel dropped the additions “Pentium” and “Celeron” last fall and only calls them “Intel Processor”. The designation of the Core generation, which was otherwise used before the “Core”, has now also disappeared and can only be found in the model number.
The Core i5-___xx now becomes a Core 5 10xx – so you start again with the one and do not continue Meteor Lake as the 14th generation in the model name. It gets complicated at this point because of two points: First, because of the supposed Raptor Lake refresh and second, because Intel has not yet officially confirmed a desktop version of Meteor Lake. The new naming only starts with Meteor Lake. The suffixes such as “H”, “HX”, “U” etc. will continue to exist. With no confirmation of a desktop version of Meteor Lake yet, one can only speculate that there will also be “K”, “KS” and “T” model names.
For Meteor Lake there is now also the addition “Ultra”. So these processors come on the market as Core Ultra 5/7/9. It is not yet known how exactly Intel will carry out the model designations. What is also unknown is what makes an ultra processor such and what distinguishes it from the processors that do not have an “ultra” suffix. Intel did not want to comment on this at the current time.
In the future there will be the following model series:
- Intel Core 3
- Intel Core 5
- Intel Core 7
- Intel Core Ultra 5
- Intel Core Ultra 7
- Intel Core Ultra 9
We don’t understand why Intel is already talking about renaming and new model names without announcing the associated products at least in a certain detail. Until the introduction of the first Meteor Lake processors, the new names will not matter to the end customer and this includes the expected Raptor Lake refresh. The partners and Intel themselves must of course adapt and prepare their marketing material at an early stage, but in our opinion this does not have to be communicated to the outside world without substantial information.
