"Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, outlined plans to bring a wide range of content, from sports to first-run movies, to anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a remote control using its new Viiv PC platform, during a Thursday night keynote at the 2006 CES. While it incorporates new hardware and software, including Intel's latest Core Duo and Pentium D 900 series chips, Viiv represents the company's larger effort to bring together a variety of content and display it on a range of devices, including televisions and handhelds." In addition, Intel teamed up with Google to provide video content for the Viiv platform.
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Member since:2006-01-01
This is purely supposition, but it seems plausible that putting Yonah under the Core moniker has a certain marketing value that Intel sees as beneficial. First since Core is new and not associated with laptops, a VIIV computer with a Yonah processor doesn't receive designation as "containing a mobile processor" by those that might associate the Pentium M with being a low-performance mobile processor. You can't have a slow laptop-chip in your media PC!
There's also the possibility that the Apple rumors are true and that there is an iminent release of the first x86 Macs afoot. I've seen in certain Mac-related forums a tendency to not see Yonah under Core as a Pentium M. It's possible that an "iBook featuring Intel's new Core processor" is a little more sexy for the Mac user than an "iBook featuring Intel's dual-core Pentium M."
I'm sure I'm missing some obvious marketing gimmicks here. You get the idea, though.
Whether it will cause any problems, is hard to say. There really isn't a lot of x86-64 software running around for people that aren't already capable of discerning between Yonah and Memrom/Conroe.
Member since:2005-07-06
This is purely supposition, but it seems plausible that putting Yonah under the Core moniker has a certain marketing value that Intel sees as beneficial.
Yep, certainly. But they're only trading marketing impact now for impact of the new architecture later on, and they risk a lot of confusion doing that. I guess they were desperate for a positive story after Netburst has been whacked all over the place for so long.
There really isn't a lot of x86-64 software running around for people that aren't already capable of discerning between Yonah and Memrom/Conro
True, but there'll already be more when Merom&Conroe come out in half a year. And there'll be a lot more with Vista debuting in 64-bit.
And it's not just the 64-bitness; Merom&Conroe should also be faster with 32-bit code than Yonah at the same clock.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Intel should have waited with the new processor names until they have a genuinely new processor architecture with the upcoming Merom/Conroe.
Meanwhile, Yonah could have been marketed as what it is: an improved, dual-core version of the Pentium M, e.g. as "Pentium M2".
But apparently the 32-bit Yonah and the 64-bit Merom/Conroe are going to use the same names, so there's going to be quite some confusion.
Or perhaps Merom/Conroe will be called Core64 or Core Pro or something like that?