Intel is killing its Pentium and Celeron brands. The company has announced that it will no longer produce the chips, effective immediately. This move comes as a surprise, as Pentium and Celeron are among the most popular CPUs on the market. The decision to end production of these chips is likely due to the low demand for them. Intel has been struggling to keep up with competition from AMD and Nvidia, both of which have released more powerful CPUs that can run on Pentium and Celeron chips. This move will likely have a negative impact on Intel’s bottom line, as customers who bought these chips may not be able to use them anymore. It’s also possible that this decision will lead to a decline in sales of these CPUs overall.
Intel has announced that it will stop using the Pentium and Celeron brands on 2023 notebooks. Both Pentium and Celeron remained on store shelves as entry-level CPUs for both laptops and desktop PCs. While Intel will still have CPUs to fill this market segment, they won’t carry Pentium or Celeron branding, but rather, they’ll just be marketed as just “Intel Processor.”
Intel says that this move is made to simplify its CPU range and let users “focus on choosing the right processor for their needs.” Intel’s focus CPU-wise will remain on the Core, Evo, and vPro brands, but we won’t see any more Celeron, Pentium Silver, or Pentium Gold laptops.
It’s not clear at the moment if this move will also affect Intel’s entry-level desktop range. Even if it doesn’t, it probably will down the road. The company currently has Pentium Gold and Celeron chips based on the same Alder Lake architecture as Intel’s 12th gen Core chips. Both are dual-core, and the Pentium Gold has hyperthreading, while the Celeron doesn’t.
If the branding change also applies to desktops, it’ll mean the definitive demise of the Pentium and Celeron brandings. Intel will need to come up with a way to reliably explain to users which chip is better than the other, though. Otherwise, it could make Intel’s entry-level range way more confusing than it already is.
Source: Intel / The Verge
