Intel Officially Unleashes Its Second Gen Core CPUs on the World

From DailyTech: Way back at the Intel Developers Forum 2009, Intel Corp. was talking about Sandy Bridge, the code-named architecture successor to Nehalem. Nehalem had already seen a die shrink from 45 nm to 32 nm; shrunken Nehalem chips (which featured lower power usage and a few other tweaks) were known as Westmere. Sandy Bridge, like Westmere is produced at the 32 nm node.

Nehalem and Sandy Bridge are "Tock" processors -- a new architecture -- by Intel's terminology. Penryn and Westmere are the "Tick" -- die shrink -- that preceded them (at the 45 nm and 32 nm process nodes, respectively).

Sandy Bridge was talked about more at recent Intel earnings reports, and in recent weeks Sandy Bridge-based laptops were leaked in various foreign tech publications.

On Monday, Intel kicked off what should be a week of exciting announcements from various players in the electronics industry by finally revealing Sandy Bridge in all its glory.

Rather than ditching the "Core ix" brand name, Intel is sticking with it. You can call Sandy Bridge Core series CPUs "Core generation 2" or "Core 2011" or some other catchy moniker. But the point is the name is staying the same.

The good here is that there's comfort in familiarity and customers won't be taken aback by strange new names. The decidedly bad thing about Intel picking this branding is that it fails to convey that Core 2011 CPUs are decidedly different than Westmere or 45 nm Nehalem designs. But for better or worse, that's what Intel decided and we have to live with it.

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