In context: Intel has been trying to redefine its corporate identity with new company and product logos, and it looks like we'll soon see branding changes for its consumer-grade predecessors. The company says it's at "an inflection point in our client roadmap," implying its upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs are a significant step forward for Intel that requires a new product naming convention.

In 2020, Intel overhauled its corporate identity to make it look more fresh and youthful. The company introduced new trademarks as well as logos with a cleaner typeface and simple geometric backgrounds with color gradients. Last year, it killed Pentium and Celeron, two of its long-standing budget CPU brands. And like all branding changes, these were likely meant to indicate a mature company that isn't afraid to move beyond its rich legacy and reinvent itself.

This year, that visual rebranding is set to continue with Intel's Meteor Lake processors, though the company announced the move in a rather unusual way. After a series of leaked benchmarks for the new CPU architecture, Intel director of global communications Bernard Fernandes went on Twitter to confirm the company is gearing up for more brand changes to mark a new chapter in client computing tech for Team Blue.

The tweet doesn't address the leaks, but the timing coincides with rumors of a massive rebranding campaign after someone discovered an interesting product name in the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database. The product in question is the "Core Ultra 5 1003H," presumably one of the upcoming Meteor Lake parts for laptops, with 18 cores and 18 logical threads as well as an unidentified Xe integrated GPU.

In the now-deleted entry of the AoTS database, we could see the "Core Ultra 5 1003H" processor achieve 1,300 points in the DirectX 11 version at 1080p. This suggests the sample is capable of a similar performance to that of the Core i7-12700 with a UHD Graphics 770 integrated GPU. The 14th-gen Meteor Lake CPU also appeared in the SiSoftware Sandra database as a 45-watt part equipped with an integrated GPU with 128 compute units.

As of writing this, the "Ultra" moniker is unconfirmed but it won't be long before we'll see if it is real or not and whether it applies to all Core processors moving forward or just a select few the company wants to promote as enthusiast grade hardware. Some are speculating Intel will completely replace the i3, i5, i7, and i9 naming with "Pro," "Max," and "Ultra" branding combined with product code numbers, but we'll have to wait and see.

Intel will hold its "Intel Vision" event on May 10-11, but that's where the company showcases software and security technologies. Computex kicks off on May 30 and that's where Team Blue usually makes hardware announcements, so we may hear more about the processor rebranding then.

Would you buy an "Ultra" Intel CPU over one with Core "i" branding?
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