Intel has finally dropped one of their most recognisable brand identities, removing the ‘I’ moniker from their line of CPUs. Now, all new consumer chips coming out of Intel’s foundries will be branded as ‘Core’ and ‘Core Ultra’, accompanied by a 3, 5, 7, or 9 to denote the power of the processor. 

Under the branding overhaul, Intel’s new lower-end chips will be named the Intel Core 3, Core 5, and Core 7, with the higher-end ‘Premium’ models being named Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 9. 

These premium chips are branded Ultra so as to make it clearer to customers which products are on the higher end of the performance spectrum. Intel will also neglect to mention the generation of the chip in marketing copy, although the number will stay on in the processor’s model number. 

This rebranding brings Intel’s branding somewhere in between its competitors, AMD and Apple. While AMD has the numbering system to denote the power of its processors, Apple products have Pro, Max, and Ultra tiers. Intel has combined both these approaches, as seen by their Ultra lineup of processors. 

Intel first started branding chips with the ‘Core i’ name in November 2008, with the launch of the Nehalem microarchitecture. This branding has endured for almost 15 years now, and has become synonymous with Intel’s brand name, especially for consumers. However, it seems that the company has a good reason to change the name of their chips, and that’s Meteor Lake. 

The rebrand will coincide with the launch of Meteor Lake, coming later this year for laptops first. Now, customers will be able to distinguish between older Intel products and newer ones. However, the older Raptor Lake chips will continue to maintain the older branding strategy, as the names will be phased out slowly as more Meteor Lake chips come into the market. 

This long-delayed processor node is all set to be the future of Intel’s CPU play, with the company calling it the most significant overhaul in years. Meteor Lake marks Intel’s foray into multi-tile processor manufacturing, a far cry from the monolithic architecture they were using until now.