INTEL NEWS By Will Fastie For two decades, it’s been confusing to figure out what the name of an Intel processor or an Intel processor family meant. N
[See the full post at: The “Intel Processor”]

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Home » Forums » Newsletter and Homepage topics » The “Intel Processor”
INTEL NEWS By Will Fastie For two decades, it’s been confusing to figure out what the name of an Intel processor or an Intel processor family meant. N
[See the full post at: The “Intel Processor”]
Intel started inventing processor “brands” (Pentium, Celeron, etc.) because there was a court case some years ago that said Intel could not lay claim to “486” as a brand, for example, because legally it was just a product number (referring to the 80486 processor). They needed something that they could call their own, so 80586 became “Pentium.”
Now they apparently have something that they’re calling “Intel Processor.”
This has legal confusion written all over it. I’m not a lawyer. How does this not put them back in the same boat in which they were when 80486 was the official name? Maybe because the official name is “Intel Processor,” not just “Processor?”
What a mess.
Group "L": Linux Mint
Man, reading through the intro to the new ‘logo’, it sounds like a joke piece. I swear, I feel like it’s something The Onion would come up with.
And the logo itself? “Here’s your white bread, like it or lump it.” The resurgence of Arial? (I know it’s not Arial, but you know what I mean.)
Frankly, as long as I can know how many cores, hyperthreads and what clock speeds a processor has, they can call it Green Cheese and I wouldn’t care. I compare specs, not brand names.
This said, are they still going to use cute names for their “generations” like Panther Canyon?
And will they still use the term “generation”?
That’s the sort of thing I’d like to know.
-- rc primak
The fact that I have an Intel Core i3 2120 processor meant nothing to me other than that it was one of the new processors in 2012. I learned other things about it – 3.3 GHz, 2 real and 2 virtual or threaded cores, L2 & L3 cache, etc. later by doing some research on my own.
It’s nothing really new. In the 1980’s & 90’s Intel made the 286, 386, 486 in SX and DX, and then the Pentiums. I remember asking a computer salesman what “Pipeline Burst Cache” was, he couldn’t me a good answer but knew that the more you had the better your games played.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake as soon as you make it again.
Intel was and still is my main choice of CPU over AMD which were cheaper but factory overclocked which ran hotter with LOUD cpu heatsink/ fan combo’s. Altering FSB speeds, CPU clock rates relative to synced memory timings and latency were all that mattered to me for years, then WinTel killed the fun 🙁
Had a slot one intel Celery 300A which quite happily ran on a 100MHz bus speed to 450MHz for years albeit with a smaller CPU cache than the proper slot one Pentium 450MHz CPU.
Ran any game at the time with extra purchased cooling at a fraction of the cost.
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