March 22, 2004 – Intel plans to drop the age-old practice of incorporating processing speeds in the name of its chips in favor of assigning model numbers, in an effort to emphasize more features such as security and multi-tasking, according to Reuters.

The move will involve matching processors with a series number — for example, the 300-series Celeron chip, 500-series Pentium 4, and 700-series Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, with higher increments indicating richer feature-sets (e.g. 330 series vs. 350 series) — and also benefits Intel’s Pentium M notebook computer chip, which sports a lower clock speed than Intel’s other mobile chips.

Consumers who are used to evaluating top-of-the-line systems based on gigahertz may not easily digest the change, however. “It’s going to take a tremendous amount of education on the part of Intel and Intel’s customers for this to…get assimilated into the marketplace,” said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. Nevertheless, Intel won’t be eliminating chip speeds from its product descriptions, and PC shops are expected to continue to refer to chip speeds in their advertising.

The move is not without precedent — AMD adopted the use of series numbers vs. chip speeds over two years ago, ironically seen as a way to deflect questions about its chip speeds being slower than Intel’s.