Arm’s ubiquitous CPU cores get new, less confusing names

As the CPU designer who stands behind customers like Qualcomm, Arm has never really needed a charismatic brand. But the company has decided upon a new naming scheme that’s easier to remember.

Over the last year or so, Arm has chosen the dreadful “CSS for Client” to refer to the processors it licenses for smartphones and PCs. Its CPUs have been known as a “Cortex,” while it has branded its GPUs as Mali. Arm’s customers sometimes to refer back to the Cortex brand, but are otherwise free to call them what they want.

What Arm is changing is the name of the platform, to signify what purpose the chips will be used for. Now, for example, an Arm core designed for mobile will be known as a “Lumex,” while an Arm core designed for PCs will be known as “Niva.”Arm will use “Zena” as its automotive brand, “Orbis” for IoT, and “Neoverse” for an infrastructure product.

Arm will also take a page from Dell, which ditched its iconic laptop brands for a more generic Pro and Pro Max nomenclature. Now, Arm will use “names like Ultra, Premium, Pro, Nano, and Pico to show performance tiers — making it easier for developers and customers to navigate our roadmap,” the company said.

“This platform-first approach reflects the rapid conversion taking place to the Arm compute platform at the system level, not just the core IP,” Arm said. “It allows our partners to integrate Arm’s technology faster, with higher confidence, and with less complexity — especially as they scale to meet the demands of AI.”

It’s not clear what the new brands have to do with “AI,” but at least they seem to have a bit more thought behind them. Now can we do something about the corporate logo?