Nehalem Core i7 branding explained

[Ci7]

We had a pleasant meeting with a nice chap from Intel that told us the story of the Nehalem brand. As you should probably know by now, the Nehalem Bloomfield desktop CPU will end up branded as Core i7.

Intel explained that Core brand was very well accepted but at the same time, Intel had too many variables, such as Core 2, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme and so on. It was too confusing and therefore Intel simply decided to keep Core.

The letter i and number 7 are there mainly for phonetical reasons, Core i7 as a whole sounds and pronounces good. The small "i" doesn't actually stand for anything, explains Intel. Even the number 7 doesn't mean its the seventh generation processor, it is just a number.

This might give you an idea that future Nehalems might end up branded as Core i6, Core i5 and so on, but this is not something Intel wanted to talk about. Intel simply hopes that this will get things a bit more simpler than it was. So, now you know.

source

[Another Canuck]

Lazy man's translation: "It sounds cool".

[Digitalx]

least they could do then is make it in some sort of relation to model

Core i2 xxxx

Core i4/8 xxxx

Core x4/8 xxxx

or something logical then something completely irrelevant

[Gary2MBz]

Lazy man's translation: "It sounds cool".

I didn't get the above but you explained it perfectly, thanks :p

[Smigit]

least they could do then is make it in some sort of relation to model

Core i2 xxxx

Core i4/8 xxxx

Core x4/8 xxxx

or something logical then something completely irrelevant

that seems to be pretty much what they're trying not to do but. If they felt they had too many names with Core 2, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme ect then the aren't going to solve anything by going i2 xxxx, i4 xxxx, i8 xxxx ect ect

[betadan]

when i first saw the "i7" branding i jumped to the conclusion that it stood for intel generation 7

[osirisX]

Translation: Marketing was too lazy to actually come up with something decent.

[MrKuro]

i7 ... just another way to try and be cool :p