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It’s no secret that Intel currently faces serious financial headwinds. It just posted its first quarter financials, which are the worst in the company’s history. In light of this, according to one of its employees, Intel has now reached an “inflection point,” which requires it to make some significant changes. One of those is ditching its long-held “Core i” branding, initially introduced in 2006 when it left the name Pentium in the dust. Instead, it’ll be using Core Ultra branding in the future, though Intel’s admission leaves a lot of details unanswered.
News of Intel’s plans surfaced over the weekend when a Core Ultra 5 1003H CPU appeared in an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark via Videocardz. Speculation ran rampant that Intel was dropping the “Core i” branding for something different, and now it’s been confirmed by a person whose Twitter bio describes their work as “comms for Intel.” Bernard Fernandes says the company is indeed making “brand changes” as it prepares for the launch of Meteor Lake. The CPU involved is an odd duck, with the benchmark listing it as having 18 cores and 18 threads, which is unlike anything from Intel before.
When Intel changed from Pentium to Core, it was because of an actual inflection point when the company moved from single-core CPUs to multi-core. The company’s Core CPUs dominated the industry for a decade plus and were a radical departure from precedent. Now that Meteor Lake is next in line for a rebranding, it seems fitting as it’s the company’s first tile-based architecture. Furthermore, the company will use a tile-based design as its roadmap extends into the future, so it’s suitable that the company changes things up a bit.
Meteor Lake will receive an all-new LGA1851 socket when it arrives later this year.
Credit: Benchlife
It also seems to be confusing at first blush. One of the main benefits of the previous naming scheme was you knew which generation CPU you were buying because it was right there in the name—Core i5 13900K tells you it’s a 13th generation Raptor Lake CPU. The Core Ultra 5 1003H doesn’t tell you anything besides the number 5 indicating its midrange status. It’s also possible this is a one-off naming scheme for an engineering sample CPU, so let’s not use our Jump to Conclusions mat just yet.
For now, Intel says it’ll reveal more details as Meteor Lake is closer to the finish line. It’s due to launch later this year, but it’s still unclear if it will be mobile-only or for desktop as well. There have been rumors it might include desktop parts, but only at the i5-level and lower, with a Raptor Lake refresh taking up the fight against AMD’s V-Cache CPUs. Either way, it is clear now that the rumors indicating Meteor Lake was cancelled were incorrect. However, the rumors from mid-2022 about it being delayed to late 2023 were spot on, so you never know these days.
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