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Intel To Rebrand Processors In 2008
DJ notes that TechARP has up a look at Intel's plans to rebrand their processors, including what must be a leaked internal chart of the old and new landscape of product names. This story doesn't seem to have been picked up anywhere else yet. Quoting: "We just heard from an anonymous source that Intel will be rebranding their processors in 2008... These new brand names will come into effect on the first day of 2008. Intel hopes that these new brands will not only leverage the strong Core 2 brand but also make it less confusing for the consumer. At the moment, the Intel Centrino mobile platform has five different logos with brands like Centrino, Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro. Starting from January 1, 2008, Intel will consolidate the Centrino Duo and Centrino brands under the Intel Centrino brand, and rename the Centrino Pro as Intel Centrino with vPro Technology."
Didn't Intel just rebrand dropping "Pentium" and going with "Core"?
I just heard that the new names range from Confusium to Confusium Core 2 Gold Pro Deluxe 1800 Gamma.
Seriously, though, when has Intel ever simplified the brands to make things easier?
[
Would it be too hard to name them: Intel [marketing name] [standard benchmark rating]?
Then, for those who want more - socket/clock/cache/whatever.
TFA: "In the server and workstation segment, Intel will continue to retain the Xeon and Itanium brand names, but with new logos. The Itanium 2 logo, in particular, will only say Itanium Inside. The desktop Core 2 brands and logos will see no changes in 2008."
So yes, you still get the same old ugly sticker on new desktops.
So they're renaming Centrino to Centrino? That's awesome!
I'm getting Smurf flashbacks.
I can never remember if my MacBook has a dual core Core Duo 2 or if it's a duo core Core 2 Dou Dual II or a Coral Dualo Duex 2. :-\
-- haaz.
rename the Centrino Pro as Intel Centrino with vPro Technology
Much better....
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I thought the whole point was to confuse the user since they finally gave up on the "GHz" rating system.
I mean, how fast is a "Pentium 5473" or whatever it is they call them these days?
No sig today...
For the love of god slashdot, for once be brave and do NOT under any circumstances RTFA. It never stops loading! There are cycling video ads in strips own the side and it uses that horrific ad-word shit. It was like a view into hell itself...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Sounds like an antacid.
I have been a hands-on techie since the days of the 386. That means I am overdue for a severe case of Alzheimer's and a possible touch of Delusional Managementitis. After those two factors, Intel's stupid naming schemes are confusing enough that I don't bother trying to remember the differences between their processor families. It's definitely easier to buy AMD. But I know I would spend the extra time to work out the differences if I wanted to build a new box. That can't be what Intel's marketing people are hoping for -- "Buy Intel, if you really want to" just isn't a very appealing line.
Well, it's not like anybody ever knew what vPro and VIIV were for in the first place.
A general re-branding for the core families of the chip is fine, but it would be better if they re-vamped the model numbers. How it should work (in my own, special, little world) is a general brand name that lets you know what type of ship you are dealing with in general. Then a 6-8 digit model number. It should be easy enough to figure out a naming convention that would give the number of cores, clock speed, and cache. When I am trying to figure out which chip I want to by from them, it would be great if I didn't have to research each (meaningless) model number individually.
AMD Roadkill!
AMD Eddies! Fast Eddies : More cores for less!
AMD Apology : Sorry we pissed you off Intel!
This is my sig.
Sandpiper! More steppings less work!
... this did *not* clear anything up.
Actually... I'm more confused. Shit.
I thought that centrino, viiv and vpro were all just marketdroid-speak for "ooooh! Now with Ridges!" and "Not Just White! Really Bright!"
I'm going to assume that nothing happened. we'll see how I fare then.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Core re-branding such as "Hard-core" (for gamers), "Soft-core" (web browsing) and "Core-blimey" (for every other application)?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The story was picked up over 1 month ago by http://www.hkpec.com/ and was posted on El Reg on 23rd Aug http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/08/23/intel_shakes_up_chip_branding/...
Not new
I think that they're having legal problems with Apple on that one. Apple wants to trademark "Apple Core" for their OS kernel and since they do business with Intel now, they're in some negotiations.
That was pretty good! I pulled a business and legal argument out of my ass that sounds plausible! Get it - "Apple Core"! Funk in A, I need to market myself for some of those seven figure Fortune 500 consulting jobs! The above is the kind of horseshit that gets you in the door!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
And you know, isn't that a good reason to not be pushing this as fact JUST yet? Rather than just trying to be digg and first past the gate on every stupid false rumor that comes out, you either (a) wait for confirmation or (b) (horrors for a slashdot submitter) GET confirmation? Just a thought.
I'm not saying the story is false, because I don't know. I just figure that if this, like the latest i{Tablet, Newton, Pincushion}, this might be shown to be false and Slashdot loses even more credibility with serious viewers
This is not only old news, but it came direct from a quoted, named, Intel representative! C|Net story from July 20th
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I know why they stopped doing it, but I wish these CPU * Video card companies would use actual model numbers ala 386SX/386DX, 486DX/486Dlc etc...
I also know that lead to ridiculous over use that we currently see in video cards 9800XX-Max-Super-X.
It might actually bring back some truth to the consumer.
686-Mobile/2.2GHz vs 686/3GHz vs 4c868/1.8Ghz
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Give us names that tells what's what, or we'll switch to AMD and they'll kick your butt!
Stop marketing and give is a way to know cores/speed/cache/socket/architecture.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
God. What stupid and uninformative names.
They convey neither a perception and ready identification of the product's capability - nor do they associate with anything meaningful - allowing for that association to transfer value to the named object.
Just call them like motorcars and aeroplanes - when these were sensible.
"The Intel Mark VIII C" "The Intel Mark V plus"
They could at least be compared reasonably in relation to each other.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Two steps...
1. Use model #s for the cpus... e.g. 6600AT or someshit
2. Put a ref chart with relevant deets on a website [*]
3. Profit.
I lied there are three steps.
[*] deets like clock rate, fsb speed, TDP, cache per core, shared cache, cache latency/ways/ports, instruction set features [e.g. SSE, MMX, etc], pin-count, voltage, heat tolerance
Instead of calling it the "Centrino Duo Laptop" you can say "it's the Centrino 6600JZX" then a smart user can just look up 6600JZX on their website and know what the fuck it is. Do the same for the northbridge and GPU, et voila.
The confusion comes not from clever names, but when they try to consolidate all the info down.
Or in the case of Nvidia/Ati where they use non-well-ordered numbers. Like is the 8800GTS better than the fastest 7xxx series? Hint: There are stripped down versions of the 8xxx series that are worse than cards in the 7xxx series. Nvidia doesn't really provide a lot of info [or they didn't last I checked] concerning clock rates/bus width and freq/number of pixel pipes, etc...
Of course if they just ordered the fucking numbers that would work well. There probably is method to their madness, but I don't know what it is and most customers probably don't either. They could do [probably are what do I know] use the first digit for the major revision, e.g. 8xyz, but then use x/y/z for levels of mem/bus/GPU performance, e.g. a 8000 would be basic, 8009 would have the best GPU in that class, 8900 the most memory, 8090 the fastest/widest bus, etc.
That way if you saw 8555 and 7999 you could easily tell that the latter is the maxed out version of the previous revision of the core [and likely faster].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
vPro just kicked in, yo!
We care why? They're consolidating their badges, and increasing the type size on some. Whoopity fuck.
When I started gathering components for the first PC I built I remember very well the biggest obstacle: processor names... It was just so darn confusing that I drew a bloody chart to keep track of all of the different names used by Intel and AMD... I really hope this is going to change now, I literally spent hours on finding out which name belonged to which CPU and I don't plan on wasting that time again on my next PC...
It seems that Intel has excess manpower in marketting and they're just giving them makework to keep them busy. Everything beyond Core 2 Duo for desktop and Xeon for servers simply spreads confusion. More just isn't needed.
AMD, just stick to Athlon 64 and Opteron, plus a number which increases as the chip gets faster, and you'll do a lot better.
One extra name for mobile use is OK too, but Intel's use of composite words is just moronic. Not even died in the wool techies have any idea what all the ViiV and vPro crap is.
A new manager has just arrived. He found the old product name confusing.
Unfortunately, they're confusing for a good reason: the product line is complex.
So, he'll impose a new set of names on it. He will think the new names are less confusing, because they make sense to him. And he says it will make things less confusing for customers, because he projects his own feeling onto his customers. And perhaps the new names really are a little less confusing.
But in reality it will make things more confusing, because of the name change.
The people who actually did understand the old names will be confused by the new ones, and the people who learn the new ones will be confused whenever they have to deal with legacy memos or documentation that uses the old ones, and everyone who is deeply involved in the products will have to carry around with a little wallet-sized conversion table around them with both sets of names on them.
Meanwhile, the average customer won't be aware of anything other than the processor brand (Intel) and the clock rate.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Intel Centrino with vPro Technology." Just rolls off the tounge doesn't it?
I heard this on the CNET podcast Buzz Out Loud a few weeks ago...
Since that makes it soooooo much more obvious Intel... good one.
Seriously, have no idea the difference between Centrino and Centrino with vPro whatever. Why do you actually give one a completely different name?
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
Probably an admission that viiv and vpro haven't been anywhere near the success that Centrino was.
Make it cheaper and stop being assholes with the ever changing slot design. And hey here's an idea, make a chip that runs somewhere south of the temperature of the sun.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickreffam.htm
I had to write a Perl script to count the number of processor types.
From what I remember, there was at one point a "Mobile Athlon" that was like a desktop athlon, but designed for better power efficiency, etc.
What really isn't clear here is, they've taken the Core 2 Duo out of a desktop, made a version for laptops, but they now just call it Centrino, or maybe Centrino Duo. Which is confusing as hell -- when my new job gave me a laptop, it had a "Centrino Duo", and I had to go online to check if it could run a 64-bit OS -- because the main difference between "Core Duo" and "Core2 Duo", I thought, was that Core Duo was dual-core, and Core2 Duo was dual-core 64-bit.
This is even less obvious. My next Intel laptop, if I get an Intel laptop, might have a straight "Centrino", and I'll have to take some obscure model number online, or just boot Linux on it, to find out if it has dual-core, 64-bit, or even what the clock speed is.
Stupid marketing like this won't stop me from buying whichever is the better deal, but if it's close, I might just buy that clearly-labeled AMD Turion64 X2.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In the 1990s I worked for a packaging design firm that had Intel as a client. The company's assignment was to design packaging and in-store displays for the latest Intel processor, the Pentium II, now with MMX. So Intel shipped us all the latest logos associated with the chip.
I don't know if you remember that logo, but it looked pretty much like this. Blue Intel logo, purple and black Pentium II logo down below, and an ugly little purple-red-yellow rainbow gradient thing in the corner that said "MMX."
So the designers did their designs, they conferred with Intel, final designs were agreed upon, and the designers delivered their comps to Intel. Somebody gets a call:
Intel: We're looking at the final designs and everything seems in order. Except the logo seems all messed up.
(Our designers didn't do anything to the logo, so far as we knew, so this was a little surprising.) Us: What's wrong?
Intel: Well, this doesn't really look like Pentium Purple, and this logo definitely is not Intel Blue.
Us: Ah. Well... yes, I see what you mean. Not to worry. This is pretty normal when dealing with four-color process. We'll have one of our production people on-site at the printer's to make sure it matches your sample as closely as possible.
Intel: As closely as possible doesn't cut it. I need this to be Intel Blue and this absolutely must be Pentium Purple. And now that you mention it, the rainbow gradient doesn't really look like it goes from Intel Red to Intel Purple to Intel Yellow, either. Did you get our Pantone swatches?
Us: Well, yes. But since this is a four-color job, you realize that you can't really get all those colors into the job. They don't all fit into the four-color gamut. We assumed that you wanted the closest approximation for each (and I think they match pretty well, but we can do better).
Intel: Not acceptable. We NEED this to be Intel Blue. This MUST be Pentium Purple.
Us: The only way to do that is to use custom spot colors. We'd have to run an additional pass through the printer for each color.
Intel: Then that's what you have to do.
Us: OK, so just to confirm. For every single piece of advertising we produce for you -- every box, every poster, every five-foot-high cardboard cutout, every display -- in addition to the four-color process for all the photographs and box art, you want us to run four additional spot colors. And you're willing to incur the additional charges that this entails. And this is just to print the Intel Pentium II logo, which on this box I have here is exactly 1.2cm tall on the lower righthand corner of the box.
Intel: That is correct. Spare no expense.
The lesson learned: Don't expect rational decisionmaking from the internal marketing department of a behemoth corporation.
Breakfast served all day!
As resident IT guy for kith and kin, I get asked about this all the time. And frankly, unless I happened to have payed attention recently, I can't really give a straight answer. I have a job, a girlfriend, a cat, and other stuff to do. Intel had it easy with the Pentiums, higher numbers (Roman numerals and price) were better. Now, as has been correctly pointed out here, it's more complex. They really need to return to the simpler format for regular PC buyers. Something like MyIntel 1,2,3,etc... to market chips for the folks and ProIntel for the widget fiddlers among us who Need to Know.
Right here.
I don't think there is any way to make processor naming and branding less confusing to the average consumer because the average consumer mostly doesn't care. The terms mobile, dual core, hyperthreaded etc, etc mean nothing. All they want to know is if it's "fast (enough)".
Meanwhile rebranding does litlle for tech heads like us because what you call a processor isn't as important as what it does. We already know what we're looking for in a processor. We understand what kind of processor suits our needs and look at the acual numbers: clock frequency, number of cores, data bus, cache, as well as the actual performance benchmarks--all things that mean NOTHING to a general consumer.
So really there isn't much processor companies can do to make their product lines easier to understand. The general consumers don't care, and tech people already know all they're looking for. So rather than market to the consumer, just throw up the processor and the specs to the guys who really choose the chips--the hobbyists and guys in IT and engineering who actually build/choose the computers. It doesn't matter what you call it, we'll figure out what to use any way.
Faster than a Pentium 5373. Which bit of this is hard? The chips are the the Core 2. The Core 2 exists both in Duo (2 core) and Quad (4 core) configuration. Then there is the numerical designation. Bigger numbers are better - the 2xxx series are the slower (but highly overclockable) chips, the 4xxx Series are the laptop-like cut down slightly chips, and the 6xxx series are the fastest and most expensive.
So, to recap: Bigger numbers are better.
And if you want to compare them to AMD? Go read a benchmark relevant to the task you wish to perform, the numbers haven't been comparable since the 486 anyway.
Are they trying to sell the SAME hardware to the same consumers by rebranding it and fooling them into thinking it is new?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Of course, a Pentium by any other name will still smell as sweet... overclocked and baking at 70 degrees Celsius...
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
New naming convention: 21x64 / EV-y. I bet that would turn heads.
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You mean the Apple iCore?
But on the other hand - if you sell the same chip with different brandings it's easier to make much more money since it is easier to motivate the higher prices. So probably the processor industry has gone the same way as the car industry and created a multitude of models from the same base with very small differences.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I buy computers with a three year lag, so this summer, I had no problems knowing that this Pentium IV thingy is faster than my previous Pentium III doodad. I have a vague recollection that Celeron means an el-cheapo PIV with less cache, but I'm going to have to bone up on these Centrino, Core, Duo thingamajigs etc. three years from now when I buy my next used computer. Or I'll just shrug and figure that any of those is bound to be faster than this old heap.
First, I'd have to find something I can't do on my present machine, though. Unlike some systems, GNU/Linux isn't getting much slower over the years, if you ignore the huge windowing environments. Go EvilWM!
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3739 fruke 15 0 2856 1100 928 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.19 evilwm
And yeah, I know I'm just killing the computer industry. I do office work, process audio, surf the net and watch videos. Why would I need a supercomputer on my desk?
As I tell all my customers. Intel is a marketing company FIRST and a processor company SECOND.
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You, sir, have out-funnied me. Well done. 8-)
-- haaz.
customer: "im sorry....whats the difference between Pro and vPro technology"? sales associate: "uhmm....yeah...i think the vPro stands for vagina" customer: "ohhh, i guess that makes sense"