ProcessorAccording to a report from Ars Technica, it appears that Intel plans to revise, yet again, its current product naming system come January 1st, 2008.

This will be the third such revamp of its product naming convention since 2004, in which it moved away from designations based on pure speed alone. This was followed by it shifting away from the Pentium branding to the current Core Duo/Core Solo designations in 2005.

To verify the authenticity of the news, the Ars team managed to contact company representative David Dickstein, who shared a bit more of the rationale behind the planned revamp.

We undertook this effort to simplify choices for consumers and business, provide consistency and clarity for messaging, and create an efficient, less complex and sustainable brand roadmap.

The result is a simpler, easier to understand brand selection for both consumers and business, which minimizes impact to our customers and better supports our current and future product roadmaps and overall business objectives and strategy.

To summarize the new plan:

  • Intel Viiv Processor will be known as Intel Core 2 Duo Processor with Viiv
  • Intel vPro Processor will be known as Intel core 2 Duo Processor with vPro
  • Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Solo Processors will all revert to Core 2 Processor
  • Pentium D and Pentium Dual-Core will simply be known as Pentium
  • Core 2 Extreme, Celeron and Xeon brands will remain unchanged

What is not known at the moment is how does Intel intends to differentiate between the many Core 2 processors in terms of their various speed, cores, and cache sizes.

Given the sheer number of processors released over the years, do you consider the occasional product revamping of Intel’s processors inevitable?