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.

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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.

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65 Comments Comment from the forums

tallguy1618

Seems fine, can't wait to see what nehalem's going to be like.
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alvine

I wonder how much the "extreme" editions will cost :( Hopefully amd comes out with their new cpus also.
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I am so sick of the "i" everything since the iPod. I am certainly tired of Apple over using it as well as everyone else. Stop the madness!!!! Do something different, now I have to listen to 4 years of this crap from Intel too. I am not an Apple hater either I have a MBP and Iphone and love them.
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nukemaster

bobbydigiI am so sick of the "i" everything since the iPod. I am certainly tired of Apple over using it as well as everyone else. Stop the madness!!!! Do something different, now I have to listen to 4 years of this crap from Intel too. I am not an Apple hater either I have a MBP and Iphone and love them. Yeah, too much I and E in things.
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MercAB3

iHate it

"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.
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MrsBytch

Core 4 would have made more sense since its a quad core processor. Core 3 wouldnt have made any sense. And the QXXX series being called core 2 makes no sense either since they have 4 cores. What are these guys smoking?
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Brashen

Quit Freakin Bitchin!! My God you guys are a bunch of whiners who gives a dead rat's feces what they call it I don't care if it's iRape you or isodomize you as long as it's a good product!!
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sheytan

Anyone know around what Ghz they will be?
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"I" has load of connotations Idiot, Imbecile, Ignorant, Immature, Irrational, Impulsive, Intermittent, Incomprehensible, Inconclusive, Ironic, and the ever popular Illogical (Mr. Spock).
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.
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Core 2 stands for the second generation of the Core architecture, not the number of cores. The "duo" and "quad" suffixes are what determine the number of cores. Pay attention. The 7 in "i7" most likely means that this is Intel's 7th generation of x86 chips.
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