Intel is changing the branding on its low-power Atom processors. While Intel will continue to use the Atom name for chips aimed at a broad range of devices including smartphones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops, it should be a little simpler to figure out what kind of performance to expect from a chip by glancing at its name.

Meet the Intel Atom x3, x5, and x7 processor families.

atom branding

Basically Intel is taking the same approach with its upcoming Atom chips that the company has been using for its higher-performance Core series chips for years. The new chips are named according to a “good/better/best” scheme much the way Intel’s Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors already are.

Atom x3 chips are basic processors aimed at smartphones and entry-level tablets. Atom x5 processors will offer better performance. And x7 chips will be the highest-performance chips in the Atom family… although Intel will continue to offer Core M processors which bridge the gap between Atom and Core i3 chips by offering a low-power, higher-performance (and higher cost) solution.

The new naming scheme will likely roll out with Intel’s next-gen “Cherry Trail” processors which are set to launch later this year.

It’s interesting that Intel makes no mention of Celeron or Pentium processors. Right now the chip maker offers Celeron and Pentium chips that are based on the same low-power architecture as its Atom “Bay Trail” processors as well as Celeron and Pentium chips that use the same technology as its higher-performance Core “Haswell” and “Broadwell” processors.

via UMPC Portal

 

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16 replies on “Intel Atom x3, x5, and x7 chips on the way”

  1. I wish intel Partners would go ahead and start releasing Cherry Trail Tablets already, i want a 2-in-1 with clamshell keyboard dock, but getting a Baytrail now seems such a waste.

    1. I thought the same but now ordered an Acer Aspire Switch 10. The current generation looks quite solid and I think it will take some more months until we see products that are stable. (It took Acer half a year to get rid of most of the problems of the current Switch 10.)

  2. Time to kill Celeron and Pentium parts. They confuse even a geek like me (so which is faster and why don’t I just get a lowend i3 part???).

    And there’s no brand value there – The only people who even remember Celeron and Pentum brands know them because they’re both tied to really old tech -“Here’s my new work laptop! Awww it’s got a Celeron sticker on it [starts peeling it off]…”

  3. I’m not sure if you’re referencing the source, but that graphic seems to imply that Pentium and Celeron chips are positioned as the budget tier of their performance focused products. Bottom right corner of the graphic.

    1. What’s not clear is if that means they’ll all be based on Core architecture though. The current generation of chips includes Bay Trail-based models like the Celeron N2840 and Haswell-based models like the Celeron 2955U.

      Both offer more performance than an Atom chip, but the Haswell-based model is a much more powerful processor.

      1. Also, the Intel announcement may be only covering the first half of this year… which means it probably doesn’t include the Braswell release and that’s the one that is suppose to replace the present Bay Trail based Celeron/Pentium SoCs…

        The emphasis on tablets seems to confirm this, as Cherry Trail is planned for primarily the premium tablet offering and is the one starting to ship to OEMs now but Braswell won’t come out until the second half of this year…

    2. Pentium and Celeron are kept to compete against the complete AMD lineup. 🙂

  4. Intel product naming is a mess right now, with all the Atom/Celeron/Pentium/Core etc. Also Atoms especially have been a nightmare to decipher because there’s been the odd one that’s been good for its intended purpose while most have been utter rubbish. I predict it will still be necessary to read the technical specs and trawl the benchmark sites to find how a particular chip performs, regardless of what Intel calls it.

    1. I mainly rely on the Passmark CPU benchmark
      result database to tell me which CPU performs
      better among the one(s) I’m looking at.

      I don’t understand why Intel has so many products,
      they’re behaving the way Samsung did with smartphones.
      Maybe Intel is trying to fill every market sement and niche,
      so any competitor can’t get traction.

      1. Passmark isn’t always reliable. It can behave very much like Geekbench (which favors ARM chips due to hardware encryption accelerators). And Intel isn’t the dominant force actually, rather its ARM. You can find ARM everywhere not only in smartphones and tablets but also inside devices such as WiFi routers, LED TVs, NAS, monitors, etc. They fill almost every segment that electronic devices occupy…

  5. it makes no sense for them to keep celeron and pentium arround with this new naming scheme, at least imo

    1. I think they’re reserving Ps and Cs for low end notebook and desktop offerings. They’re keeping them to ensure AMD can’t make any money on cheap computers 🙂

      Atom is for tablets and phones

    2. I believe this move will make celeron and pentium ‘core-i’ based only again (the brands are included on the graphic, but only on the core-i side). Having them with both core and atom CPUs was a real mess.

      1. I will still read all the specs. There are i3 CPUs that are better specced than some i7. Sure, desktop vs mobil, but still, an i7 is not automatically faster than an i3.

    3. pentium = dual core without hyper threading

      i think pentium should be around to provide powerfull single core perfomance with cheap pricetag, and i agree with you no need for celeron if atom is powerfull than celeron.

    4. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me either.

      Intel should keep: Atom x3, x5, x7 and i3, i5, i7 only.

      They should get rid of CoreM, Pentium and Celeron.

      Too many models can be somewhat confusing.

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