In 2023, Intel announced it was rebranding its Meteor Lake mobile CPUs by resetting the numbering for CPUs indicating their generation. Whereas before we had a 12900K, 13900K, and so forth, Intel was resetting that clock back to "1" because Meteor Lake was an all-new design that warranted a fresh start. Now, it has its next-generation Arrow Lake architecture waiting in the wings, and it seems Intel will be continuing this trend on client CPUs by using the Core Ultra 200-series branding.
News of Intel plans comes from a reliable source in China who uses the online handle Golden Pig Upgrade. This tech-tuber has previously shown off pre-release Intel hardware and is considered an insider regarding Intel CPUs. This account has now confirmed Intel will officially ditch the "Core i" branding for its desktop processors, as it had done previously with its tile-based mobile chips, aka Meteor Lake. Therefore, we can expect a flagship Arrow Lake CPU named something like Core Ultra 285.
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As Videocardz notes, this move by Intel has been speculated before, but the news confirms Intel's plans. If you recall, Intel's first tile-based mobile chips bear Core Ultra 100-series branding, so it makes sense that the successor to these chips will be the Core Ultra 200. However, it shows Intel wants to have symmetry between its mobile and desktop families instead of using different branding for different platforms, the way it does currently with Core Ultra and its 14th Gen CPUs.
The Golden Pig account also confirms that Intel will once again refresh Raptor Lake-H, its midrange mobile platform. This will be the second refresh for Raptor Lake-H, and because it's not using a tile-based design, it will not feature the word "Ultra" in its branding. Instead, they'll just be named Core 200. Intel is doing something similar as it recently refreshed Raptor Lake mobile as the Core 100U series.
Not much is known about Arrow Lake's core counts and process node, though It has already been spotted with 24 cores and no hyper-threading. There have also been rumors that Intel will use TSMC's 3nm process. It was long thought Intel would be using its 20A process for Arrow Lake, but now that might only happen on midrange CPUs and lower down the stack. This new architecture is slated for release later this year on the LGA 1851 socket.
