Intel's Nehalem chips to get 'Core' branding

Intel's next-generation desktop processors will be branded "Intel Core" with an "i7" identifier for the first wave of products.

The i7 identifier will apply to the first crop of high-end desktop processors, according to George Alfs, an Intel spokesperson. Other identifiers will come later that will "complement" the i7, said Alfs.

There will be a separate black logo for the highest-end offering called the Extreme Edition. Model numbers will differentiate each chip.

"The Core name is and will be our flagship PC processor brand going forward," Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president and general manager, said in a statement.

Intel is trying to simplify branding. In the past "it's been Core Duo, Core Solo...Basically, we're going to simplify Nehalem down to just Core," Alfs said.

Currently known by the code name Nehalem, the desktop Core i7 processors are slated to ship in the fourth quarter and will be based on a new microarchitecture that will have faster chip-to-chip communication and be better at doing multiple tasks simultaneously--what Intel calls hyper-threading, among other improvements.

The Core i7 processors will also be Intel's first processors to put all four cores on one piece of silicon. (Something that Advanced Micro Devices has already achieved with its Phenom and Opteron processors.)

Core i7 chips are expected to have a special appeal to enthusiast gamers because of the increased performance that typically comes with a new Intel microarchitecture. Content creation will also be a target market, Intel said.

Versions, due later, will be targeted at the server market and, after that, the mobile space, where certain versions will integrate a graphics engine onto the same piece of silicon as the processor.

[Freiheit13]

I'm excited about the new chips, but somehow "i7" isn't nearly as descriptive as "solo", "duo" and "quad". How many cores will a "Core i7" chip have? How will one know whether the Core i7 3000, which might have 2 cores, is better than the Core i7 2800, which might have 4 slightly slower cores? Simplification can go too far, and Intel has passed that limit. Solo, Duo and Quad were descriptive and helpful. When you remove the helpfulness in the name of simplification, you lose both.

[WinstonV]

Of course, this confusion can only benefit Intel. All they have to do now is go back to the bad old days and just tell people to buy the highest number possible. CPU model numbers have thus become the new megahertz.

Without any evidence, I'd guess that the choice of "7" isn't malicious, though. Rather, it's an in-joke: The 586 became the Pentium, the Pentium Pro was called 686 by some people, and presumably we are now supposed to think of Nehalem as the 786.

[someguy999]

I have to agree, i7 means nothing to anyone but Intel. Even in the article they weren't able to clearly articulate what i7 really means.

[Lethos]

I have to agree, the name seems to be quiet illogical, but I suppose it gets away from the idea of dual, quad etc, which they was starting to go a little over the top with, and is piggy backing on the i-"product" fad instead.

It's a bold move, and either they haven't entirely finished with the final name for it, and they are simply doing a confusing name for the means of well, it's a topic of conversation now isn't... why did they call it the i7 ?

http://www.infinitepixelstudios.com

well I'm certainly curious, and look forward to testing one of these Intels new chips, like many others. Hopefully it will also bring down the price on the Quads, and make them a far more affordable processor platform.

"Dev-Lethos"

[guest86]

I need to know. Will Nehalem Core i7 work on Windows XP? If not work on Windows XP. I hate Windows Vista for many reasons. I lucky don't own Vista. I stick with XP. I need make sure i7 Core must work on Windows XP. Don't forget get lastest driver for Windows XP to allow running on newest processor - Core i7. I have Core 2 Duo E8500 with 3.16 GHz. Size 45nm. Can be replace with Core i7? Please tell truth for me.

My system: Windows XP Professional, Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 with 3.16 GHz, 4 GB RAM DDR2 with 800 MHz, Nvidia 9800GX2 with 1 GB GDDR3 and 500 GB Hard drive. I love to use Windows XP to against Windows Vista. Because Windows XP is much fastest than Windows Vista. I am happy to have Windows XP. I have no problems with XP so far.

[Gasaraki]

OH just give it up. You hate Vista yet you yourself claim to not own it. Why don't you just go back to Win 3.1, it's way faster than XP.

No it will not work for your current motherboard because the new chips will 1) use a new socket type 2) will have the memory controller on the cpu, not on the motherboard and 3) use DDR3 only.

And thank you for letting us know how awesome your computer setup is.

[The_Decider]

If he hates it why would he own it?

I guess your comment makes sense in the MS-addled brain.

[The1egend]

This doesn't seem right. Duo and Quadro make sense. Maybe it will be the model number series? Intel Core i7xxx series maybe? Instead of the current exxxx or qxxxx(x) series intel chips. I mean it just seems that Intel has had a umbrella name for people who want to look for dual or quad core (duo and quadro), and then people look at the ghz of the chip, and thats how most non-knowledgeable people choose their processor. Whereas more informed people would look at the model number and possibly the stepping if it were available. More to the point, my 60 year old father who may look into buying a new computer would see the core duo logo and the fact that the processor is 2.66ghz but he wouldn't know or care to look if it's a e4700, e6750, e7300, or e8200. IMHO I don't believe this will make processor selection simpler for the masses, although the more informed will still find these chips as they are looking very promising from the initial previews.

[Mr. Dee]

@guest86:

Of course it will, then again, you probably won't get any faster speeds since Windows XP is not being continually developed or optimized to take advantage of the latest CPU technologies. So Vista becomes a more realistic option because its the latest version of Windows that Microsoft is continually supporting, and Intel also is optimizing their processors to target. Its strange that you would say Vista is slow on your system specs, I am running Vista x86 Ultimate on a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz HT, 2.6 GBs of RAM, nVidia Geforce 6200 512 MBs of AGP and it seems run faster than XP or about the same in some scenarios. Windows Vista is probably even more optimized since the last time you tested it on your system things such as improve drivers for your video card and Vista's Service Pack 1 might change your opinion.

[The_Decider]

Vista will run slower on this chip, without a doubt.

Vista is slower than XP with any system specs.

[BlitzBoy1120]

I have yet to understand what i7 is supposed to mean. When i first looked at it, I thought it was a 7-cored processor, which was out right absurd. True, with the names, it's utterly difficult to know what they are without solo, duo,quad.

[guest86]

Hi Mr. Dee,

Ok. Thank you for explain me about Vista. But I prefer skip Vista and wait for Windows 7 or Windows Mojave when release in end of 2009 or 2010. I want all of my old programs and games to work on Windows 7 operating system. I hope Windows 7 must work on any oldest PC gamine like out date(Windows 95 to XP) and newest games for future release of games. I will buy Starcraft II and DIablo III for my Windows XP. Starcraft II release this end of the year December 2008. I can't wait to try demo game first before buy real game at Bestbuy or Walmart and other kinds of store.

I heard people are still complain on Windows Vista for bad reasons. Oldest games don't work on Vista. Older program don't work on Vista. We want old memories of programs and games back. I still use Aol Instant Messenger 5.5 and 5.9. Because new AIM 6.0 or newer versions can eat a lot of memory ram like about 256 MB to 512 MB. New programs are not important to me. What a waste memory ram and hurt people's feelings. I love old classic programs and games on new operating system - Windows 7. I don't want Windows 7 or Mojave get serious problems. Must more stable than Vista. :-)

[naterandrews]

You know what would surely help ease the transistion of those towards Vista? Classic Mode- much like the OS X launch included a emulation mode of OS9, this helped those to buy the new OS (helping Apple move the whole ecosystem forward) and keeping customers happy and less vocal about the problems in a first gen product.

HUGE THOUGHT-
Sure, we all hate Vista (well, most of us at least). But give MSFT credit- when they have to completely retool the entire kernel and everything, ALL old apps will fail to work. Many think that this is the best option for Microsoft- completely rewrite the book on security, speed, interaction with all new technolgy as well as looking forward with open-ended hooks in the OS that scale and allow for rapid changes...
once this eventually happens (and it will happen) you'll all be wishing you had Vista...

[Hernys]

Mojave is not a new OS. It is Vista, 100% Vista, with not one bit changed. They just shown Vista under another name to people that claimed not to like Vista to get an unbiased opinion on the OS (of course, they showed it properly configured and probably on latest generation hardware). GIven that the response by the same people that claimed not to like Vista was mostly "I like Mohave" then it is likely that you will like Vista as well once you test it on relatively new hardware and with current SP and drivers. And without any "crapware" preinstalled with the machine, as that seems to be one of the biggest issues with Vista machines: they come so heavily preloaded with useless software that performance and reliability become problems even on high end hardware.
Regarding compatibility, it is true that some stuff still doesn't work on Vista but my experience was that about 95% of the apps I tested did run well (higher percentage than what Windows XP saw when released, it was about 80% in my experience at the time), so unless the other 5% is critical in your case you should be fine.
BTW, RAM is cheap, your time is not. There's no excuse for something like AIM using 256MB of RAM, but if you can afford 2 gigs of RAM for your machine, it should fly with Vista.

[naterandrews]

I "think" 7 is the seventh Generation of the Intel x86 arch.?

Pentium (1)
Pentium 2 (2)
Pentium 3 (3)
Pentium 4 (4)
Pentium D is a Dual Core Smithfield core but based on P4
Core Duo (5)
Core 2 (6)
i7 (7)

Can anyone confirm this?
As a side note I agree that this makes no sense to the consumer and only serves to confuse customers. First we had the Pentium 4 5xx series then the 6xx series- where only the hardcore and enthusiast consumers understood the FSB and L2 associated with each. Then we had the 800 and 900 series PD that still served no purpose for the consumer. Intel later said that "Solo, Duo and Quad" would accompany Core branding- this was an excellent move in easing the multi-core transition by consumers. We all (even my 50 year old mom) knew that "Well, this has dual cores", followed by a hierarchical scheme of 2-4-6-7-or 8 xxx numbering schemes which helped to differentiate the cores and their power. A 2180 cant match a 4400, same for that vs. the 6700, etc.

Most consumers, especially those that DONT build their own systems or shop at Wal-Mart or Best Buy will be confused, along with the salestaff. Intel is a branding and marketing mastermind but how can they pull this off as something better than "Core 2" to consumers?

[bakedpatato]

@naterandrews
close, but no cigar.
Intel's first x86 cpu was called the 8086(it was really the 8088 that got things going)
then there was the 286
386 then the 486. Then, the DoJ told Intel that they couldn't copyright numbers, bringing rise to the Pentium arch("586")/name. P4, which was a radical departure from the Pentium architecture(NetBurst BTW) was called "686" by teh Internets.
Intel, in a nod to this tradition(IMHO), is naming Nehelem "786" or i7 .
Nehelem is a revolution, the memory controller is integrated, etc..,so this is warranted. We've all seen the benchmarks, and...the geeks of the interwebs are holding out till it comes out to upgrade systems.

I agree with the stupidity of the i7 thing,I rather know how many cores are there(Solo/Duo/Quad) than have a color that is supposed to tell me what CPU I should buy. However,I still complain about the CPU numbers, I like to see teh uber GHz.
And I lol'd when I read your comment guest86...MOJAVE IS VISTA!(good job M$, I'm serious)
@lethos: If i7 even does half as good as we expect, then AMD is in deep s**t and Intel will keep prices up. SInce Core 2 is beating Phenom already, and AMD is not indicating a successor...hmm....

[xcopy]

You're right about the numbering.

You're also right about what might happen if Intel wins. We're all in for a return to the churn/burn market Intel used to enjoy. They screwed us royally for decades, and if AMD falters, there's no stopping Intel ever again, short of a complete paradigm shift in how processors are made.

Any sane person has to want AMD to succeed, regardless of whether or not they like Intel processors. There is no competition without AMD.

[Mr. Dee]

@Guest:
If you are running mostly legacy games/apps designed for Windows 9x, on a system with specs like yours, I really don't see the point. Might as well purchase an old 1997 model PC off ebay and have fun or just run them in a Virtual Machine such as Microsoft's free Virtual PC 2007. Most of Vista's early complaints were related to device driver compatibility which existed during its release around January '2007', but much of this has been resolved since. Software apps have been updated and fully support the OS. Skipping Vista to Windows 7 does not make any sense either, since Windows 7 is based on the Windows Vista/Server 2008 SP1 code base. So any probable compatibility in Windows Vista today would most likely be in Windows 7 too. Mojave was actually Vista disguised to fool persons into thinking it was a different version of Windows, since most persons perception of Vista was negative, but when those individuals found out it was actually Vista they were using they then felt more positively about the OS after actually using and experiencing it.

@Bakedpotato:
Intels first generation processor was actually the 4004.

[The_Decider]

Using it on a non-real world machine for 10 minutes.

Let them put it on their machine and find out what happens

[Core_M]

Actually, i7 seems pretty intuitive to me. It was often confusing to have the Core 2 Duo vs the Core Duo or the Core 2 Quad, for example. The i7 brand should still be able to bear the Solo, Duo, Quad, etc. brandings anyways - Core i7 Duo, Core i7 Quad.

As for where i7 comes from, my best guess is that its because this is their 7th microarchitecture. There was a departure after Pentium 4 to restart the naming scheme back at Core 1, then Core 2. Technically, those would have been Pentium 5 and Pentium 6 chips, respectively. Now they have moved back to the old numbering scheme and added an "i" to it, presumably to refer to "Intel".

Just think of it as a Pentium 7 ;-)

[tech_crazy]

naterandrews is almost there for figuring out the i7. Just a small discrepancy though - it is the 7th generation of the Pentium family, not the x86 that was also pointed out by bakedpotato. Having an integrated Memory controller is not revolutionary by any stretch of imagination - maybe only for Intel. Sparc chips have had it for 7 generations now and AMD has had it for quite some time too. Intel kept on delaying it and using their fab prowess and marketing machine to make up for it until they finally realized that they were hitting a wall and finally jumped in.

[benjaminstraight]

Cool. i7 rocks.

[JBSimmons]

Yes, I will confirm that. I worked at Intel in the mid 80's, and yes, the roadmap of the next 10 years was called P3, P4, P5, P6, P7. We didn't specifically say what was in them until we were 2 years out from transitioning. You missed two separate generations of the P line. EE and HT editions. Intel has real names for these CPU cores until marketing, and it's delineated in the book "Upgrading and Repairing PCs...". Last edition I have is 16th edition. You will find pages and pages of CPU cores, names, versions, steppings, internal circuit widths, power, features, and more. At that time in the 80's, we were going from chip to chip in generational lines(x86, PIII, P4) and iterations (stepping). Not multiple generations at the same time until the evolution of servers and networks.

In 1985/1986, I built in a single box, 4 intel 8086 chips running simultaneously on cards in an intel proprietary bus environment (the pre-cursor to PCI). They had pins and jumpers to configure the chip for processor number, shared ram and I/O space, so card to card (each CPU had it's own RAM and I/O space also) communications could take place. We ran a modified Xenix and iRMX O/S on it. The host box even had control over the 4 on cards. Yes, a full PC on a plug in card with an active backplane host. This was an attempt to speed up the current intel systems built then (prototypes for possible PC configurations) which had 4 serial ports for 4 terminals (pre EGA, VGA days-no graphics). It was successful and placed on the roadmap. Since DEC missed the boat, IBM was eyeing running mainframe software with JCL on those multiple-CPU boxes. Part of it worked, but it showed that the PC system needed lots of RAM and lots of hard disk space, just like mainframes did. RAM then was at a super premium and the system had a FH 40Mb SCSI drive. Even mainframes had only 512Mb of RAM max and did lots of page swapping out to hundreds of disk drives - washing machine size. Empasis was always on "faster", so CPUs still are an issue 30 years later.

Those IBM mainframes were TRULY multi-user, multi-tasking. The only driving limit was people wanted faster machines to get more jobs done. Unused CPU time was often rented out or bought by other comanies in off hours who couldn't afford a mainframe. The biggest installation of iBM mainframes I had ever seen (12) in the nation was at McDonnell Douglas at Long Beach, CA. It was an extremely huge installation. The number of drives (disk and tape), I could not count. It was so loud one had to wear a headset to muffle the sound. Combined with the A/C it was as loud as a jet engine. Unbelievable. Intel itself, at it's HQ ran DEC VAXs, never IBM mainframes.

IBM made most of their money by selling S/W licenses and maintenance contracts, which expired and had to be renewed on a regular basis. Aren't we seeing that now on PC's? Especially with anti-virus software?

Now that Andy Grove's roadmap is fully built-out, new management has confounded users with labeling. "Core 2 Duo" is an oxymoron. It has 2 CPUs, not 4 as the name seems to imply. The i and #### labeling is not representative of the CPU at all. Did you know that the Core 2 and Core Duo didn't work right ion Vista until a few weeks ago when someone discovered that one CPU wasn't being used at all until MSFT released a hotfix? It also took Microsoft 25 years to write multi-CPU version of Windows properly, despite hiring multi-cpu S/W engineers from IBM and Digital (!!) Go figure...

[bigk777]

So this is a quad core processor? Will there been a version ofthis processor that has more then four cores?

[pithenumber]

iThe Apple "i" iPrefix iIs iOverused. iIntel iHas iJoined iThe iCraze.