Goodbye to the "i": Intel rebrands its CPUs as Core and Core Ultra for Meteor Lake launch

A few weeks ago, Intel's director of global communications, Bernard Fernandes, posted on Twitter that the company was going to be making some branding changes to its CPUs for its upcoming launch of the Meteor Lake-based chips later in 2023.

Today, Intel confirmed those changes, as it announced it will rebrand its main consumer CPUs into the Core and Core Ultra families in the second half of this year with the Meteor Lake release.

This announcement by Intel comes less than a year after the company decided to kill the Pentium and Celeron branding for its mobile chips. It said from this year, they would simply be branded as Intel Processor.

The new CPU names will also ditch the "i" that's been part of Intel's chip brand for some time. Starting with the Meteor Lake-based CPUs, Intel will name them with numbers only (3/5/7/9). The generation number will still be a part of the processor number (##xxxH) but it won't be used in front of the name of the Intel CPU anymore (as in 13th Gen Intel Core i&XXX).

From now on, the Intel Core CPU lineup will be for the company's more mainstream chips, while the new Core Ultra brand will be for its "most advanced client processors". According to Caitlin Anderson, Intel's vice president and general manager of Client Computing Group Sales, these changes should make it easier for people who purchase Intel-based PCs to know what kind of CPU is included:

"Our client roadmap demonstrates how Intel is prioritizing innovation and technology leadership with products like Meteor Lake, focused on power efficiency and AI at scale. To better align with our product strategies, we are introducing a branding structure that will help PC buyers better differentiate the best of our latest technology and our mainstream offerings."

In addition to the Intel Core and Intel Core Ultra brands, the company says it is "evolving the Intel Evo Edition platform brand for Evo-verified designs". Evo is the company's name for PC laptops that pass its tests for long battery life, along with fast charging and other advanced features. It's also launching new Intel vPro Enterprise and Intel vPro Essentials brands for business-based PCs.