While news of Intel’s decision to drop the “i” moniker from the Core Series branding has been floating around since last month, it appears that the fruits of its action will be seen a lot sooner than expected. The chipmaker announced recently that starting with its upcoming 14th Gen Meteor Lake, the lineup will be following suit with the drop but more importantly, it is splitting it up into two categories.
The move by Intel is part of a branding restructure, while the two categories of new CPUs will be Core and Core “Ultra”, the latter clearly depicting the lineup as being for the enthusiast-class PC builders and gamers. To point out the obvious as well, with the “i” moniker being dropped, all Meteor Lake CPUs will therefore simply be referenced as Core 3, 5, 7, and 9, or Core Ultra with the same tiering system. In other words, what would have essentially been known as “Core i9 14900K” will now be “Core 9 14900K” or “Core Ultra 9 14900K”.
The move to rebrand the labelling of its Core lineup may be partially due to Intel wanting to celebrate a milestone of sorts with Meteor Lake; the 14th Gen lineup will be the first in the lineup to be based on the company’s new Intel 4 process node, which is the chipmaker’s own name for its own 7nm die lithography. For that matter, it is also the first process node to be made using the EUV technology, as well as the next hurdle it needs to move past before it can ultimately move on to the next process, dubbed Intel 18A.
One thing to take note of is that Intel did not confirm if the Core and Core Ultra rebranding will currently be limited to Meteor Lake, or if the change will also be extended to its Raptor Lake refresh as well. However, I leak from IT Home suggests that this may be the case, with all processors in the Raptor Lake U lineup and prior will simply be labelled as Core.
(Source: Intel, Tom’s Hardware)
