Intel announced today that it is overhauling its consumer CPU branding for the first time in 15 years, resulting in a simplified naming scheme that looks somewhat similar to AMD’s Ryzen naming scheme. Intel’s new approach focuses on its ‘Core’ branding and splits the chips into ‘Core’ and ‘Core Ultra’ tiers. It also drops the iconic ‘i’ from the i3, i5, i7, and i9 chip identifiers and no longer refers to its processors with a generation moniker, like ‘13th-Generation.’ It also includes new badges, all of which we’ll cover more below. These changes begin with the Meteor Lake processors that come to market later this year but don't apply retroactively to existing chips.
Intel’s announcement comes after the new chip naming scheme emerged a month ago when new ‘Ultra’ badged processors were listed in processor benchmarks on a public database. Intel’s latest rebranding follows other retoolings of its public image, such as changing the iconic Intel logo and jingle, with the latter receiving more than a fair bit of negative feedback. Intel has also recently discarded other Intel hallmarks, like the Pentium and Celeron brands that were once household names. That change also wasn’t well received.
Intel says the Meteor Lake chips are “an inflection point for design, manufacturing, and architecture and delivers significant advances for our company and customers,” and that the changes are the result of customer requests to simplify its brand.
