Intel's 'Nehalem' Now Officially Core i7
Santa Clara (CA) - Intel today unveiled the brand of its upcoming processor: Nehalem, the successor of the Core 2 Duo CPU series, will be introduced as "Core i7" later this year and the company hopes that the new brand will be easily recognized and remembered by customers when they walk into a store to buy a new PC.
Late last week rumors were cycling the Internet about the new branding for the upcoming Nehalem processors and today those rumors were confirmed, but with a new twist. Although the first Nehalem processors to be released will be formally branded as Intel Core i7 processors, the i7 identifier will in fact be one of several new identifiers in the Nehalem product line up to be released over the next year. It seems the Intel Core will be the main branding in the family with the following identifier added in to help consumers determine easily what feature set and capability a particular processor will have. Model numbers will also help identify each chip.
The first crop of Intel Core i7 processors released will be for the high-end desktop and are expected to ship later this year. Among these first released will also be the enthusiast Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor that will differ in the branding by bearing a black logo rather than blue. The new Intel Core processors will feature an integrated memory controller for increased speed, better multitasking with the addition of Hyper-Threading technology, better performance per watt efficiency, and future versions of the processor in the mobile space will feature an on-chip graphics solution.
At this time, Intel provides no guidance what i7 means, which other identifiers are in the works and how i7 will evolve over time. Our first impression is that i7 is an emotionless and much more technical name than Core 2 Duo. But we have no idea if that will be the general impression of the market and if it was Intel’s intention to come up a cold and very technical name. However, we do are quite sure that this new processor will create even more confusion for average PC buyers.
Core 2 Duos, Core 2 Quads, Pentiums and Celerons are likely to be phased out over time (Intel will keep the Xeon brand, we were told), but they remain available for now. Without a numbering system that works across all processor families and serves as an easy to understand indicator for the performance and features of each processor, i7 will only cause additional confusion that, in our opinion, is absolutely unnecessary. We give Intel the benefit of the doubt that i7 will make more sense in a few months.
What is your take? Let us know by writing a comment below.
Yeah, too much I and E in things.
"Core 3" would have made more sense, and would have been something consumers would easily identify as being an improvement on Core 2.
I think Intel's taking nomenclature lessons from Nvidia.
I7 Inherently means the 7th generation cpus.. along the lines of a 786 model.. 8086,8286,8386,8486,8586(pentium),8686, now 8786.. But along similar features, power, and mhz specs as the 6th generation processor (core-2's)
Thanks to AMD, the Pentium line-up had a vast run of success. Multi-Core & multithreading computing on a single chip was not needed by most home consumers (until recently). On mhz note, we're talking about computers beginning in the 4.4ghz native mode (2x 2.2ghz) going all the way up to 6.6 (4x2.4ghz) and beyond overclocked/extreme cooled & tweaked. The next level of performance increases will be when a single chip (quad core extreme) breaks into the 10-12ghz native mode not overclocked with no heat issues (3.33ghz to 4ghz per core--much in the same way hard drives now have 333-375gb per platter hard drives).
However, the top of the line chips will be mighty expensive if AMD doesn't come out with some blockbuster competitive chips. Even though these kinds of chips are in the R&D pipeline, the economy has got Intel & Amd looking much like GM & Ford.
It will be a rose and readily indentified by its smell.
with the nahelem architectuare, the whole thing is based on a single core architecture as far as i know so you could have a 1,2,3,4,8 or whatever amount of cores you wanted where the "quad" core would truely fit the definition of a quad core processor
so intel calling it a "CORE" does make sense since it is based on a single core architecture instead of a dual core architecture which is "CORE DUO"
and for my own addition of thought, intel has never done me wrong so far and i cant wait to see what nahelem is capable of
the laugh made all the average pc user idiots Downloading WinXP anti-virus 2008 and Vista antivirus 2009 bareable today. Seriously how the #@$%* can you be tricked by the obviously fake software
And god help you if you try to run Windows 7 on an "underpowered" Q9450.
No, the Pentium 4 was their 7th generation X86 chip.
Am I the only one who notices this?
Like normally probably $999 tray prices for the Extreme Editions and they have released some info of a 2.66GHz Nehalem being $284 tray priced released at the same time.
Oh IDK its the second iteration of the Core micro architecture????? Hence Core 2.... with Duo meaning dual core and quad meaning quad core?