Farewell Core i Brand? Intel Confirms New Name in the Works

The i3, i5, i7 and i9 names have all been hallmarks of Intel Core chip branding. But it looks the company is preparing to ditch the decade-old naming scheme for something new. 

Last week, an Intel chip was spotted(Opens in a new window) on a public benchmark for the game Ashes of the Singularity sporting an unusual name—Intel Core Ultra 5 1003H. It nixed the usual Core “i” branding, which naturally caused some to wonder about if traditional Core i3/i5/i7 naming scheme was heading for retirement.

On Monday, an Intel spokesperson confirmed a re-branding is in the works, although the exact scope remains unclear. 

“Yes, we are making brand changes as we’re at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors,” tweeted(Opens in a new window) Bernard Fernandes, Intel’s director for global communications. “We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks!”

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

The Meteor Lake chips—set to arrive later this year—mark the first CPUs designed with the company’s long-delayed 7-nanometer process, now dubbed Intel 4. Team Blue is hoping the chips help Intel regain its competitive edge against AMD, along with Apple. So the company may be using a rebrand to help pump up the hype. 

Intel has used the “i” branding since 2008 to differentiate the various tiers in performance for the Core chips. Core i3 is more affordable, but lower-performance chips while i9 covers the extreme high end in CPU power.

The benchmark from Ashes of the Singularity suggests Intel has settled on a new “Ultra” naming scheme. So we could get Ultra 3, Ultra 5, Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 as a possible replacement.  However, not everyone is welcoming the news of the rebrand. Dylan Patel, an analyst at the consultancy SemiAnalysis, derided the upcoming change as a “very short sighted move.”

“Imagine you’re losing market share when you’ve been monopoly for decades, and your bright idea is to burn all brand recognition to the ground!” he said(Opens in a new window) in a tweet.