Month: September 2022

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel's processor lineup used to be, in the words of one of our greatest working artists, all about the Pentiums. That became less true beginning in the mid-2000s, when the modern "Core" branding was created to emphasize the company's then-new multi-core processor offerings. But it was still sometimes about the Pentiums—Pentium and Celeron have both soldiered on into the modern era as brand names for low-end desktop and laptop CPUs.

But the labels may not be long for this world, even in that diminished capacity. Intel announced today that its laptop chips will shed the Pentium and Celeron branding beginning in Q1 of 2023, to be replaced by "Intel Processor." The word "Processor" has a capital P so that you don't confuse an Intel Processor with an Intel processor.

Intel VP Josh Newman claims that unifying the Pentium and Celeron families together under one nondescript umbrella "will simplify [Intel's] offerings so users can focus on choosing the right processor for their needs." But this rebranding doesn't necessarily mean that the lineup is being simplified; Pentium and Celeron laptop chips are spread out across two distinct product families with two entirely different architectures, one based on low-power Atom cores and another based on the same Alder Lake architecture as Intel's flagship CPUs. Assuming that Intel Processors still come with model numbers, they will become even more important for people who want to know exactly which Intel processor they're buying.

Enlarge / A warming climate can lead to more extreme downpours, as Bangladesh and India experienced in 2022 (credit: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-try-to-survive-as-monsoon-rains-swamped-huge-areas-news-photo/1241419969)

There’s an old joke about the fellow who has his left foot in a bucket of ice water and the right in a bucket of hot water, so that his overall temperature is average. That seems to apply to the climate during 2022’s northern summer of extremes: Overall, the planet was tied for only the fifth-warmest June-August, yet regional heat waves shattered records.

Global warming is undoubtedly a factor, but just how the increasing extremes that marked the summer of 2022—heat waves, droughts and floods, sometimes one on top of the other—are related can be bewildering to the public and policymakers.

As a climate scientist, I’ve been working on these issues for more than four decades, and my new book, “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System,” details the causes, feedbacks, and impacts. Let’s take a closer look at how climate change and natural weather patterns like La Niña influence what we’re seeing around the world today.