Taking a page from the marketing playbook of the Pentium processor, Intel executives announced that "Core 2 Duo" is the new brand name for the chip giant's upcoming processor families for desktops and laptops.
Formerly codenamed Conroe and Merom, the Intel Core 2 Duo chips are based on the newly designed Core architecture and will include two processing cores -- or brains -- per chip, hence the "Duo."
Intel also said it will call its highest-performing processor -- designed for gamers and computer enthusiasts -- the Core 2 Extreme.
In addition to announcing the unified branding strategy, Intel said it will use the same architecture for processors destined for gaming, consumer, notebook, and business PCs.
Name and Number
A model number indicating how much power the chip consumes and its relative performance will be included with each Core 2 Duo chip.
Conroe processors will fall into either the 4,000 or 6,000 series, while the Merom processors, which use less power than Conroe chips, will fall into either the 5,000 or 7,000 series.
The chips also will include different code letters that coincidentally correspond to AMD's designations for its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 desktop chips.
The codes include U for ultra low voltage, L for low voltage, T for standard mobile computers, E for standard desktop computers, and X for extreme computers.
The letter designations mark the first time Intel has included power-consumption figures in its model numbers.
Coming Soon
Intel announced last week that it plans to launch the Conroe and Merom chips in July and August, respectively, a bit earlier than analysts had expected.
With a unified PC and notebook brand and microarchitecure, "everyone will have a simple way to choose" processors, said Eric Kim, an Intel spokesperson. "And developers will be able to more easily write optimized software just once for a variety of computing segments."
With the release of the Core 2 Duo chips, the death knell for the Pentium brand will begin to ring out, signaling an end to that processor line's 13-year reign as the company's primary offering.
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