end of Intel's Atom brand?

[Turbonium]

http://www.neowin.net/news/rumor-intel-could-ditch-atom-brand-name-for-low-power-chips
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130717PD221.html

Discuss?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Ding dong the witch is dead.

 

[Centauri]

Intel and AMD both need to rebrand across the board. Intel made the ridiculous move of junking the Pentium name, probably the most widely identifiable name in the PC world, and rather than learning from Intel's mistake AMD went and did the exact same thing with the Athlon brand. Neither company has had a coherent branding strategy since. AMD in particular has gone on an acid trip with names and numbers over the past few years.

I'm hoping that the decision to brand the latest FX chips 9xxx is AMD's way of saying that they're done with the current scheme and intend to start anew with Steamroller stuffs.

With regard to Atom, if true, broadening the Celeron umbrella to cover more products such as Atom is a smart move. That name still has a solid amount of equity and it doesn't mince words about identifying products as below Tier 1 stuff.

 

[SPBHM]

Celeron AND Pentium for basically the same thing also makes no sense...

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Here is my knowledge of Atom processors:

Use in netbooks

Totally gimped

Tablets came out, they become useless

Netbooks suck

Atom useless

 

[Gillbot]

Atom was always nearly useless.

 

[Idontcare]

In general I would argue that Intel badly needs to streamline their product brands.

It is a segmented balkanized mess, not just with brand names and tiers but also with the product numbering system itself.

I have low expectations for Intel though, if they kill of the Atom brand then no doubt they will replace it with two or three more brands in some byzantine forced segmentation effort and the brand names themselves will make no sense.

The Atom brand is being phased out in favor of a simplified branding regiment as follows:

Single core processors with less than 10MB of cache and operating at no more than 500MHz will be branded g.>,W9<o&#8482;

Dual core processors with more than 1MB of cache and operating at no less than 1.5GHz will be branded k23;Ic$a&#8482;

All other processors will be branded F44r8!pg&#8482;

We trust this new branding hierarchy will serve to clarify and better enhance product placement understanding with our customers* and end-users* alike.


(* note: Intel is hereafter rebranding its customers and end-users as Rz12406l and S3T1BMow respectively, you can thank us by way of increasing your holdings in INTC, all hail Gallaxhar!)

 

[RadiclDreamer]

The atom does and always has been a terrible chip. Even for light web browsing it was a dog.

 

[Arachnotronic]

In general I would argue that Intel badly needs to streamline their product brands.

It is a segmented balkanized mess, not just with brand names and tiers but also with the product numbering system itself.

I have low expectations for Intel though, if they kill of the Atom brand then no doubt they will replace it with two or three more brands in some byzantine forced segmentation effort and the brand names themselves will make no sense.

LOL!!!

:thumbsup:

 

[tential]

Rebranding can help a lot. But IMO, intel doesn't do well with marketing sometimes. Haswell for notebooks for example hasn't been marketed well. That's a huge jump forward batterylife wise, and I don't think a single person I know knows anything about it. I would have given it some branding scheme, booths, etc. so people would know "This is the latest and greatest and you want it."

Tech world is great at tech, but when it comes to marketing, they could have a hard time giving away free things to the average consumer.

 

[2timer]

Here is my knowledge of Atom processors:

Use in netbooks

Totally gimped

Tablets came out, they become useless

Netbooks suck

Atom useless

LOL this is quite literally the funniest thing I've seen you post. Nerd rage!

 

[Arkaign]

When a product is laggy at a single tab of gmail at 1024x600, it's crap.

 

[aigomorla]

haswell ulv is the atom!!!

 

[beginner99]

The main reason initial Atoms were crappy is because the came with a chipset that used more power than the CPU and had a terrible GPU. Hence you got poor performance and poor battery life. Not a good thing.

I still have a netbook with one of the z-series atoms. I actually haven't used it much at all int he last 2 years...it's cool on flights because it's so small while the screen is still bigger and much better than the stuff on airplanes. And on short flights they have no entertainment at all.

The main thing it sucked at was flash and especially flash video. Without that limitations it would have been fine. But and add-blocker and no-script helped a lot to avoid all flash stuff.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Atom brand is not going away.

And posting 2 links for the same source (Digitimes) doesnt make it better.

Digitimes is an utter joke in reliability.

However Atom chips will be called Atom, Celeron and Pentium. Just like Core chips was called Core, Pentium and Celeron.

 

[Tsavo]

Atomium Pro?

 

[2is]

I think Intels fundamentals are sound.

i3, i5, i7

If you knew nothing about these processors you'd still know which is the lower, mid, high end model.

 

[StrangerGuy]

The atom does and always has been a terrible chip. Even for light web browsing it was a dog.

"Just keep shoving Atom down the consumer's throat. They know it sucks monkey butt, but people will have no choice but to buy it right?"

 

[NTMBK]

In general I would argue that Intel badly needs to streamline their product brands.

It is a segmented balkanized mess, not just with brand names and tiers but also with the product numbering system itself.

I have low expectations for Intel though, if they kill of the Atom brand then no doubt they will replace it with two or three more brands in some byzantine forced segmentation effort and the brand names themselves will make no sense.

ROFL.

 

[NTMBK]

I think Intels fundamentals are sound.

i3, i5, i7

If you knew nothing about these processors you'd still know which is the lower, mid, high end model.

But what's better? An i7-2600k or an i5-4670k? i3-3220 or i5-650? And don't get me started on the mess that is mobile.

And is an A10 better than an i7? Because 10 is bigger than 7!

I say ditch the lot of them:

Atom = Mobile phone/tablet
Celeron = Budget
Pentium 8 = High end

Job done.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

this sounds like a lame axe plot to trick people into accepting lower performance stuff at the low end. we arent that stupid, all its going to do is tarnish the celeron and pentium brands. no question about it though, atom is a seriously damaged brand

ive always wondered whether the current branding is hurting pc sales. both amd and intel are so secretive about what they are selling you (they never post clock speeds anymore, they dont label the number of cores in i5 machines, etc...) that an uninformed customer really has no way of knowing whether the junk he sees in a store is an upgrade from what he has at home or not.

 

[StrangerGuy]

But what's better? An i7-2600k or an i5-4670k? i3-3220 or i5-650? And don't get me started on the mess that is mobile.

And is an A10 better than an i7? Because 10 is bigger than 7!

I say ditch the lot of them:

Atom = Mobile phone/tablet
Celeron = Budget
Pentium 8 = High end

Job done.

Atom and Celeron should die ASAP, both are synonymous with "suck" in the minds of laymen regardless of the actual merits and people buying budget laptops ain't going to give a flying shit what new brand Intel decides to come out to replace both with. If I'm making the decisions I would just call all low-end chips Pentium and be done with it.

 

[sm625]

They should all be iSomething. Celeron should be i1. Pentium, i2, basically it should be i[Numberofthreads]. The number after the dash should be two digits for clock speed, followed by two digits for TDP. omg that would be too simple wouldnt it? They would have to fire 1200 marketing staff.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

LOL this is quite literally the funniest thing I've seen you post. Nerd rage!

Well its all truth.

 

[Arkaign]

They should all be iSomething. Celeron should be i1. Pentium, i2, basically it should be i[Numberofthreads]. The number after the dash should be two digits for clock speed, followed by two digits for TDP. omg that would be too simple wouldnt it? They would have to fire 1200 marketing staff.

I like this, but what about generational leaps? Eg : Core 2 Quad Q9550 was a 2.83Ghz 4 thread CPU. So :

Core i4-2895?

Which was basically replaced by Lynnwood (I consider 1366 to be a cut above the Socket 775/1156 grouping and separate as a workstation class, just imho)

So Lynnwood i5 750 would have been

Core i4-2695?

That's where it falls apart. Even at a lower clockspeed (2.66 vs. 2.83), the 750 is a much more robust CPU than the C2Q. It gets even more confusing if you continue by thread only like you say. An i3 w/HT becomes an i4, so a higher clocked i3 560 at 3.3ghz becomes :

Core i4-3373?

Too confusing.

Let's try :

Three 'brands'

Brand 1 : Ultra-mobile stuff. Not talking Ultrabooks, but more of the phones/tablet space. As a placeholder let's call it 'Nano'.

Brand 2 : Mass market laptop/desktop stuff, everything with two or fewer physical cores. Call this all 'Pentium'.

Brand 3 : Higher-end desktop/workstation stuff, everything with four or more physical cores. Call all of this 'Quantum' (placeholder).

Then for the rest of the number, start with a letter for generation, then cores, then threads, then clock speed. TDP and cache can be on the package, but not on the model number itself.

So let's apply this to current chips starting with Lynnwood.

i3-530 becomes Pentium A24-2.93
i5-750 becomes Quantum A44-2.66
i5-2500 becomes Quantum B44-3.33
i7-4770k becomes Quantum-X D48-3.50

It's imperfect, but you do get a quick and consistent understanding of which generation it is, number of cores, number of threads, and clock speed. Put the unlocked moniker with the -X instead of a K. Still you'd need to know : cache, socket, TDP, unlocked or locked, turbo, etc, but to have all of that in the model would mean chaos. I still think it is far better than the travesty that AMD and Intel model names currently are. It's not the end of the world if you already know the real situation well, but it's extremely confusing to people who don't follow it super closely. AMD stealing the 'K' moniker, stealing the four-digit system, but one-upping Intel on naming makes for comedy as well. After all, who would want a crappy 4770K, when for much less you can go buy a 6800K!