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Intel Confuses, Rebrands Some Core M Processors As Core I (laptopmag.com)
Reader thegarbz writes: As already covered previously Intel has announced it's 7th generation Kaby Lake processors. Curiously absent from the announcement was any mention of Core m5 and Core m7 product lines. As it turns out, Intel quietly removed the m branding and rolled its budget processors up into the Core i5 and Core i7 brands.
When we met with representatives of Intel to talk about Kaby Lake, they said that consumers didn't understand the Core m branding and that this move would help alleviate customer confusion.But what's more confusing: having two different brand names for different types of CPU or having the same name for both? Intel will tell you that you have to pay attention to the SKU numbers at the end of the chip names. And if you do, you can sidestep the issue. The regular i-series will continue as usual: Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7, with all of the processor numbers ending in the letter "U" (the i3-7100U, i5-7200U and i7-7500U). The former m5 and m7 will have the letter "Y" in the name (i5-7Y54, i7-7Y75 and m3-7Y30).
This isn't like Atom, which used an entirely different core design. Core M (both Broadwell and Skylake) is just a regular Core i, with a lower TDP and clock speeds. Core M Broadwell limited Turbo Boost to a single core, but Skylake will Turbo on both cores. It seems to be using the i7 dual core design, since Core M has 4MB cache like the i7, instead of 3MB like the i5 and i3. Which is also why Skylake Core M beats out a similarly-clocked Skylake mobile i5 in certain short benchmarks - the benchmark isn't long enough for thermal throttling to kick in, and the 4MB cache beats out the 3MB cache.