By David Meyer
Tuesday, August 12 2008 07:02 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,62044750,00.htm

Intel has revealed the consumer branding for the successor to its Core 2 Duo brand.

The manufacturer's upcoming chipset microarchitecture--codenamed Nehalem--will find its way into desktop PCs as "Core i7". In its Monday announcement, Intel also said the first products to bear this branding will appear in the fourth quarter of this year, starting off with a high-end "Extreme Edition". This is the first substantially new desktop and server processor design on 45nm (nanometers) and follows on from Penryn, which was an adaptation of an earlier design scaled to fit the new process.

"The Core name is and will be our flagship PC processor brand going forward," said Intel's general manager of sales and marketing, Sean Maloney, in the statement. "Expect Intel to focus even more marketing resources around that name and the Core i7 products--starting now."

One of the key aspects of the Nehalem 45nm microarchitecture is the resurrection of Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, which can handle eight software threads on the four processor cores of the initial product. According to the manufacturer, this--along with the addition of an integrated memory controller hub--will lead to performance improvements and enhanced energy efficiency.

Further details about the microarchitecture are expected to be revealed at the Intel Developer Forum next week. Nehalem chips will also be coming out for laptops and servers, but the precise timing of this is as yet unknown.