New Alder Lake-N Chips Could Be First Without Pentium/Celeron Badging

According to a report by Coelacanth's Dream, a couple of new Alder Lake-N processor names have been discovered in an Intel graphics bootlog. These chips are known as the N100 and N200. Traditionally, the 'N' badging would signify a Celeron or Pentium product; however, there is no such terminology to be found this time. That leads the outlet to believe these chips will be the first to incorporate Intel's new "Intel Processor" brand name.

A few days ago, Intel announced that it would retire the 20-year-old Pentium and Celeron naming scheme. In its place, Intel will use a very generic "Intel Processor" term. Starting in 2023, Intel Processor will represent all of Intel's budget-friendly CPUs, which are cheaper and less powerful than the Core i3 lineup.

The most notable hint at the name change is the drastically different model numbers found with the N100 and N200. Previous chips have used four digits plus the N to signify a full model name - such as the Pentium N6000. But here we see a reduction of the thousandth digit to hundreds only, signifying these chips could use the 'Intel processor' name instead.

The name change would be appropriate for the new CPUs, as these chips are believed to be a part of Intel's new budget-friendly Alder Lake-N architecture — built to replace current Pentium and Celeron Jasper Lake CPUs.

Alder Lake-N will be built on the same Gracemount cores found in Alder Lakes E-cores, with a maximum configuration of eight cores on the flagship model. As a result, these chips won't be particularly fast compared to today's chips. However, they will be very efficient and incredibly compact yet still retain performance akin to Intel's Skylake parts. That's a perfect combination for Chromebooks and entry-level Windows laptops.

According to the bootlog data, the N100 and N200 are quad-core parts with no hyperthreading. Naturally, we should expect a flagship eight-core eight-thread part to be in the works to complete the lineup. The release date for Alder Lake-N is expected to be in 2023.