Intel to drop Pentium name with Merom and Conroe

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Japanese website PC Watch reports that Intel will drop the Pentium branding altogether and instead settle for the name 'Intel Core' with their next generation architectural releases codenamed Merom and Conroe, that will be released on the mobile and desktop fronts respectively.

I can't confirm the PC Watch report, but I will say that I find it highly convincing. If this isn't what Intel is doing, then it's what they should be doing. There's no point to a "processor" brand like Pentium, now that you have to specify if you mean a single-core or multi-core "processor," with hyperthreading or without, 64-bit or not, and so on. You can brand the architecture, you can brand different products based on that architecture (e.g. the rumored "Solo" brand for single-core and "Duo" brand for dual-core), and you can brand platforms like Centrino or Viiv. But the currently confusing Intel Pentium branding situation, where the "Pentium" name is followed by half a dozen options (Extreme Edition Dual-Core Low Power Hyperthreaded EM64T...), will be greatly simplified by just getting rid of the now vestigial Pentium brand altogether and branding the products based on chip- and platform-specific feature sets.

Source: Arstechnica

The new architecture, with is focus on performance per Watt, rather than raw horsepower, warrants new, distinct branding, and 'Intel Core' is it, the report suggests. Merom and Conroe are both likely to be made available in single-core variants, so their debut also provides a good launch point for Intel's upcoming Solo and Duo branding scheme.

How will Merom and Conroe be distinguished between each other? The former will undoubtedly be made available at lower power-consumption levels than Conroe, much as Intel today offers low-voltage and ultra-low voltage lines alongside its standard-voltage Pentium M CPUs. Again, claims that Intel will introduce a new numbering scheme, prefixing model numbers with E, T, L or U, depending on a part's power consumption.

It's not hard to imagine Merom being found in Intel Core chips T to U - ie. any one that consumes 49W or less - while Conroe will be E-class Intel Core chips (50W or more).

Source: Channelregister