Intel details new two-tier branding strategy beginning with Core Ultra "10th gen" Meteor Lake CPUs

We already know of Intel's plans to adopt a new branding strategy for its upcoming Meteor Lake processors. We've also seen some leaks that indicated what the new naming scheme would be like. Today, the company is officially detailing further specifics of this branding exercise.

Intel considers Meteor Lake to be an "inflection point" in terms of design and architecture. As such, the company feels the need to simplify and differentiate Meteor Lake offerings from other client products.

Accordingly, Intel will no longer indicate the generation in front of the Core branding. This means the company will no longer refer to generations such as 14th gen, 15th gen, and so forth. Instead, the generation will be indicated in the processor numbering itself (in the ##xxxH format, for example). 

The other big change is that the familiar "i" in Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 would be dropped. CPUs from Meteor Lake onwards will change over to Core 3, Core 5, Core 7, and Core 9. These belong to what Intel considers as "Mainstream offerings".

For example, Intel Core 5 processor ##xx would tell us where it stacks up among the rest of the SKUs. Intel said that the final numbering scheme after the word "processor" will be discussed at a later date.

Beginning H2 2023, we will also see a new class of processors named Core Ultra. These include the Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 9, although it looks like there won't be a Core Ultra 3. The Core Ultras are part of Intel's "Leadership offerings".

So far, we have seen benchmark leaks of the Core Ultra 7 1002H, Core Ultra 7 1003H, and the Core Ultra 5 1003H. Going by these names and Intel's new naming scheme, it looks like Intel is rebooting the generation numbers starting from "10" with Meteor Lake with the "2H" and "3H" probably indicating differentiation within the same family.

It may be noted that the new branding only pertains to Meteor Lake and onwards. Raptor Lake Refresh parts, which are slated to launch in the coming months will continue to be based on the older naming scheme.

Finally, Intel confirmed that Arc graphics can be paired with both Core and Core Ultra processors hinting that we are likely to see Meteor Lake laptops with Arc dGPUs soon.

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