PROCESSORS
Intel Core is a brand name used for various mid-range to high-end consumer and business microprocessorsmade by Intel.
In general, processors sold as Core are more powerful variants of the same processors marketed as entry-level Celeron and Pentium.
The current lineup of Core processors includes the latest Intel Core i7, Intel Core i5, and Intel Core i3, and the older Intel Core 2 Solo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, and Intel Core 2 Extreme lines.
The original Core brand refers to Intel's 32-bit mobile dual-core x86 CPUs that derived from the Pentium M branded processors. The processor family used a more enhanced version of the Intel P6 microarchitecture.
The Core brand comprised two branches: the Duo(dual-core) and Solo (Duo with one disabled core, which replaced the Pentium M brand of single-core mobile processor).
Intel Core Duo (product code 80539) consists of two cores on one die, a 2 MB
L2 cache shared by both cores, and an arbiter bus that controls both L2 cache
and FSB (front-side bus) access.
NEHALEM MICROARCHITECTURE BASED
With the release of the Nehalem microarchitecture in November 2008, Intel introduced a new naming scheme for its Core processors. There are three variants, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7, but the names no longer correspond to specific technical features like the number of cores.
The Core i3 was intended to be the new low end of the performance processor line from Intel, following the retirement of the Core 2 brand.
The first Nehalem based Core i3 was Clarkdale-based, with an integrated GPU (Graphics Processing Units) and two cores. The same processor is also available as Core i5 and Pentium, with slightly different configurations. It is similar to the Core i5-4xx series but running at lower clock speeds and without Turbo Boost.
Source: www.enwikipedia.org (Access June, 2012)
