Shedding some light on what we'll soon hear coming out of Intel's mouth, Bill Calder has posted on the Technology@Intel a piece about the company's branding strategy. Basically, Intel is looking to focus on the 'Core' brand, while keeping the Celeron, Pentium and Atom names in use. The Core 2 Duo/Quad names will die out with the LGA775 parts, but the Core i3 and Core i5 will start coming into play in the more or less near future.

Bound to create some confusion, the future naming scheme will see CPUs on different sockets bear the same family name - so the higher-end Lynnfield quad-cores will be named Core i7 'something', while those without HT (hyper-threading) and lower clocks will be known as Core i5 'insert number here'.

Overall, the plan is to use Core i3 for entry-level, Core i5 for mid-level, and Core i7 for high-end processors, both for the desktop and mobile segments. Things should become a little more complex and yet clear once Intel introduces the Lynnfield and Clarkdale processors as they'll span the whole Core range. Until then, it's official - the Core i5 and i3 names are a go!