New Intel Trademark Filed

jmanforever writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Intel Inside VIIV' and 'Intel VIIV' were filed as U.S. trademarks. The question is, what does VIIV mean? Could this be the Roman numerals for 6-4 indicating a 64-bit chip, or could this be the Roman numeral five twice, separated by two lines, indicating the dual cores of the Pentium 5 chip?"

Pentium 6

[fembots]

Or maybe it's Pentium 6, performs like a Pentium 4? Similar to AMD XP1800+ is 1.5GHz but performs like a 1.8GHz Pentium.

Or maybe it's Pentium M2, after the success of Pentium M series. VIIV = upside down M with a II in the middle.

Or maybe it's Penitum 5 Dual Core? "Pentium V, 2 Inside"

Or maybe it's just a marketing stunt? Similar to Google's trademark application "Google R2D2".

1. SBC Might Buy AT&T
2. Google Planning Web Browser?
3. Slashdot Considers Can-Dupe Act

See the trend?

Re:Pentium 6

[spac3manspiff]

Maybe it's Intel Inside VIIV' and 'Intel VIIV' with AMD inside.

Re:Pentium 6

[Altizar]

Maybe they are just really bored and decided to get a trade mark on something really stupid to see how the press would react.

Re:Pentium 6

[einhverfr]

Right. It is pronounced:

PENT-ium VEEV

Re:Pentium 6

[de1orean]

clearly, it's

\m/

or

PENTIUM R0x0RZZZZ!!!!11oneone

Re:Pentium 6

[Fred_A]

Obviously, Intel has branched into editors and will soon be releasing vi v. 4

This suggests that AMD uses Emacs.

Re:Pentium 6

[Saiyine]

will soon be releasing vi v. 4

Do you mean viviv ?

Re:Pentium 6

[tetromino]

This suggests that AMD uses Emacs.

Good thing those new Opterons are almost fast enough to run it...

Re:Pentium 6

[timeflux]

VIIV, ie, viiv, is a valid word [pronounced as veev] in turkish and it means "sucks".

Re:Pentium 6

[ntufar]

> There is no such word in Turkish. Plus Turkish words never start with sound "V". In general sound "vee" is very rare in Turkish. FYI

Re:Pentium 6

[altan]

This is not true. The closest word to "veev" would be "ve", which means and.

Also, Turkish words cannot have two identical vowels next to each other, going on what I remember about 4th Grade in a Turkish school.

Re:Pentium 6

[MarkGriz]

Or maybe Intel and Trent Reznor are trying to boost their popularity with a cross marketing campaign, and they really meant to trademark Pentium /VIV\

Re:Pentium 6

[sharkey]

No, it's the Pentium VIIV, Lucy Carmichael's wacky neighbor. Remember the one where they got locked in the Northbridge with Mr. Memory?

Pronounced "Double-U Two"

[wasted]

If, for some reason, Intel was working on a chip that would be labled "W", the next generation of that chip would be W2. A graphic artist may overlay the roman numeral two over the center of the W, so it looked like VIIV.

Of course, this theory falls to pieces if Intel doesn't actually have a prospective "W" chip.

pentium 5

[I r CommanderCool]

if it is pentium 5, it better be 64 bit.

Re:pentium 5

[ZorinLynx]

I'm surprised they've kept the "Pentium" trademark so long. I mean, Pentium sorta implies the 5th generation, as in 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc... Shouldn't they have moved to Hexium by now?

Instead they stick with the Pentium number and keep incrementing a number after it. Either they're too lazy/cheap to come up with another product name, or they have something else in mind.

At least they didn't call the Opteron the "Pentium Opteron".

-Z

Re:pentium 5

[Paul d'Aoust]

yeah, I thought they shoulda been at Hexium too... considering their Pentium Pro (and later Celeron) chips were called 80686... They should be at Septium right now, because I b'lieve the P4 core is called 80786... wait, that's not true! look what I found [sandpile.org]:

There is no such thing like 80786! The last was 80486, and becouse of legal issues Intel changed its "labels" to PENTIUM class (I remember NEXTGEN was involved).
My ways of thinking (CAN BE NOT TRUE):
80586 class = Intel Pentium, or 100% compatibile
80686 c

Re:pentium 5

[Compenguin]

i686 is Pentium Pro not Pentium MMMX. Try running compiling something -march=i686 with gcc and running it on a Pentium MMX.
Pentium MMX is i586 + MMX
Pentium Pro is i686
Pentium II is i686 + MMX

Re:pentium 5

[Paladin128]

Continuing with your train of thought...

Pentium III is i686 + MMX + SSE
Pentium 4 is RISC on crack cocain
Pentium M is the result of a P4 knocking up a PIII

Re:pentium 5

[magarity]

I'm surprised they've kept the "Pentium" trademark so long

That's like saying you're suprised Ford is still using the 'Mustang' name for some cars that have only loosest similarity to the first year Mustang. It's called 'Brand Awareness' and companies spend jillions on marketing campaigns to make consumers want [insert trademarked name here]. The name 'Pentium' is going to be used for as long as Intel can get mileage out of it.

Re:pentium 5

[Waffle Iron]

Shouldn't they have moved to Hexium by now?

With the Pentium IV they should have gone through Hexium, Heptium and Octium. They would be planning for the Nonium right now. Coming up would be Decium, Hendecium, Dodecium and Triskaidekium. Considering that, I guess I understand why they just stuck with the Roman numerals.

Or could it be . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's finally breached the barrier and will be releasing a 75-bit processor?

Re:Or could it be . . .

[tomhudson]

... or a 6-bit pentium 4 ('cuz it will run cooler with fewer bits).

It's probably for a quad-core p6.

Re:Or could it be . . .

[jd]

No, it's a dual core. They just put one on backwards.

Intel Patented 64-bit and Dual Cores?

[Master Bait]

Or did they patent a process where they do it all with mayonaisse, mustard and pickles?

Spelled wrong

[mboverload]

They just spelled "Viva la AMD" wrong.

Perhaps Intel has friends in high places...

[Attaturk]

It's all in the font. It's a dubya can't y'all see that!?

V\/V

Please excuse phoney U.S. accent. =D

Re:Perhaps Intel has friends in high places...

[Em Ellel]

It's all in the font. It's a dubya can't y'all see that!?

V\/V

Would that not be tripya?

I'm betting on

[Performaman]

Pentium 525. Dunno why, but it just sounds right.

Re:I'm betting on

[JohnnyBigodes]

Only thing is... 525 in roman numerals is DXXV.

Re:I'm betting on

[schtum]

Holy cow, we have [com.com] a winner [cnet.com]! Or maybe not, those articles are almost a year old.

My first thoughts

[Tsiangkun]

six, four. Hmm I wonder if it's for a 64 bit chip.

I didn't think about the 5 II 5 interpretation, and I doubt the market who needs to know "intel inside" would understand the symbol either way.

In other news today

[digitalgimpus]

Intel also registred:

MMDCL

which is the roman numeral for the temperature their new chip will run.

Re:In other news today

[owlstead]

2650 degrees kelvin? Are they going to produce some kind of metal?

Re:In other news today

[einhverfr]

2650 degrees kelvin? Are they going to produce some kind of metal?

Tungston?

OTOH... 2650 F will melt gold but not platinum.

So much for gold contacts on the chips. They will have to use platinum or tungston....

Re:In other news today

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Funny, my Athlon 64 3400+ is currently 102F compared to my friend's P4 3.0ghz at ~900F

Re:In other news today

[toddestan]

For your homework, I suggest that you compare the Prescott to the AMD64, and see which one runs hotter. The AMD is hotter business dates back to the Slot-A Athlons vs. the PIII.

stackable design?

[LiquidMind]

"The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design." (Source [ronald.idv.tw], and another [theinquirer.net])

does anyone know what they mean by stackable design?
is this supposed to be taken literally? stacking one CPU on top of the other?
or just some buzzwords that mean nothing that this implies?

Re:stackable design?

[Humorously_Inept]

Well, there is RAM that is stackable and the slightly different chip packages literally sit one on top of the other. This would be hard to implement with processors because of heat, although the articles indicate that a heat sink designed for the purpose may exist, high localized power requirements, and I imagine problems with PCB design (especially if the motherboards are still 4 layer), layout and mechanics.

Sounds a little off the wall to me, but then so does the suggestion that the chips will "fly alon

Re:stackable design?

[MBCook]

I believe that this refers to the ability to "stack" the cores together, that is create multicore chips. Sure there are supposed to be multicore P4s and Pentium Ms, but they are "hacked" together, not optomized for it. AMD's Opteron, on the other hand, has been designed for it from the start.

That's my guess. Literally stacking cores not only would have terrible heat problems, but how do you deal with all those pins? 478 per core (the Pentium V will probably use even more than that) is 956 pins. But you would have to have a socket for those dual core chips, and another seperate socket for the single core chips. Complicated. Either that or you'd have to use 956 pin sockets for ALL chips and just not use half the pins. Again, complicated.

Natural dual/triple/quad/whatever core is my guess. Not hacked, but designed for it specifically.

Re:stackable design?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't think dual core Intels will necessarily increase the number of pins. They can both be separate cores on the same bus, much like a Xeon DP system. With the interconnects so close, they don't need to lower the FSB clock to prevent signal issues. A one processor system, the clock can go higher because it acts like a point-to-point bus. A multiprocessor system with multiple processors on the bus is more complicated from a signal transmission line perspective.

Re:stackable design?

[pjbass]

Sure there are supposed to be multicore P4s and Pentium Ms, but they are "hacked" together, not optimized for it. AMD's Opteron, on the other hand, has been designed for it from the start.

I can't argue the fact (and won't) that AMD designed their Opteron for dual-core from its inception, due to the memory controller, and today's P4's and PM's are not. However, you really should read up on the Cedar Mill and Smithfield platforms that Intel has announced. Sure the first dual-core procs they'll release will be two Prescotts welded together (presumably by running them next to each other...), but the true "dual-core" procs they intend to sell are designed from the beginning to be dual-core. I've seen one of the Cedar Mill processors running in the debug lab, and trust me, it's running much faster than the current procs, plus it's dual-core, and it consumes less overall power than today's single proc (think 5 GHz, dual-core, ~90 watts, vs. 3.6 GHz PSC, ~110 watts) and does not suffer from the memory bus starvation that the Xeon's currently die from. Intel has their designs right for their dual-core line.

Re:stackable design?

[doormat]

Look at the dates on those articles. They were written long before Intel hit the power/heat wall. The Pentium 5 (aka Tejas) was shitcanned in favor of a Pentium M derivative.

Re:stackable design?

[Michael Woodhams]

IIRC, there really were experiments with chips whose instruction set was a simplified Forth. This would have been 15+ years ago, so I guess we can conclude they didn't work out so well.

CVVC

[zakezuke]

Honda Inside.

Now known as the Civic.

Re:CVVC

[Kenshin]

and furthermore, CVCC = "105 cubic centimetres"

Re:CVVC

[zakezuke]

and furthermore, CVCC = "105 cubic centimetres"

While I stand corrected on CVCC... the CVCC had a 1500cc engine. 105cc would be be decent for a moped or small motorcycle but wouldn't power anything car sized.

Slashdot's new tag line

[BigWhiteGuy_27]

Slashdot - Speculation for Nerds. Stuff that Might Be.

Re:Slashdot's new tag line

[1lus10n]

Slashdot - Speculation about things that were posted before. Nerds bitching about stuff.

Slashdot - Now we are running low on stories. Someone post something quick !

Slashdot - Not really news. Might be someday.

Reminds me

[geneing]

Somehow this reminds me about another trademark "Pentax *ist" (a bunch of digital cameras). It's way too silly to pronounce that ("May I see that Pentax starist camera please...")

The official explanation is that '*' can stand for anything you consider your are (like artist).

Re:Reminds me

[Zocalo]

I've come across several fellow photographers that came up with an appropriate pronunciation for such a fishy product name: "Starkist" [starkist.com]. Which just serves Pentax right for trying to be so pretentious if you ask me...

Re:Reminds me

[Cryptnotic]

It's way too silly to pronounce that ("May I see that Pentax starist camera please...")

If you read the Japanese pages, it's pronounced isuto, which is a Japanese way of pronouncing "ist" using their syllables. The * is silent.

Re:Reminds me

[BluBrick]

So Hen3ry sas been promoted to marketing, now has he?

Re:Reminds me

[Peyna]

Asteriskist.

gross conjecture

[Antonymous Flower]

"The question is, what does VIIV mean? Could this be the Roman numerals for 6-4 indicating a 64-bit chip, or could this be the Roman numeral five twice, separated by two lines, indicating the dual cores of the Pentium 5 chip?"

After this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org] I'm forced to the conclusion that these three stories are three points on a grid forming a triangle corresponding with the location of Atlantis. Could it mean Slashdot editors are from another planet? Could it mean open source is to the renaissance as ancient greece is to atlantis?

Dunno but

[El Cabri]

I don't know but the two potential explanations offered by the poster are pretty smart. Congrats.

Well it sucks

[Deliveranc3]

I wouldn't stick something like that on my dog, that trademark is garbage.

No way they'll really use that.

Maybe you should read it like GNU

[Fortran IV]

VIIV -> "V Isn't IV" -> "Pentium 5 Isn't Pentium 4"

Intel sucks

[Doc Ruby]

No, it's a picture of a vampire's front teeth! Intel has been taken over by the biters!

Perhaps...

[natron 2.0]

It could be a Pentium 5 with Intel Inside

Example:

V=5
II=Intel Inside
V=5

I know.

[CastrTroy]

It's the new Pentium 8 chip! V + IIV = VIII = 8.

VI is the mirror image of IV...

[hkfczrqj]

It's going to be dual core, everybody knows that... So if one core (a "Pentium IV" core) is the mirror image of the other, why don't call the other core "VI muitneP"?? Well, VIIV is much more appealing than "VI muitnePPentium IV" (the first P is supposed to be backwards)...

I'm thinking too much bull... I should go home.

5 [parallel sign] 5

[azpcox]

It's simply their multiple core pentium 5.

Don't get hung up on the Roman Numerals.

MMX

[siliconjunkie]

They patented "MMX" as well. Perhaps they have something planned for 2010?

Re:MMX

[Bri3D]

What are you talking about? This is not about patents but trademarks. And MMX has been in Intel processors since the P2MMX, so it can't be delay wither.

Re:MMX

[siliconjunkie]

Yes, yes, I realize I said "Patented". I meant to say "Trademarked". Sorry for the confusion. Next. my post was meant to be taken lightly with a bit of humor. I, of course, *do* realize that "MMX" technology has been available since the P2MMX. You see, "M" and "X" are also both roman numerals. When you put them together it equates to 2010 (1000+1000+10).

You see, I was pointing out that just because Intel trademarked a series of letters that happened to correspond to roman numerals does not mean that

Re:MMX

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

(The next person who flames this guy for using "patented" instead of "trademarked": I better not catch you ever misplacing a comma. Because you're quibbling about things as important. Everyone knows what he meant - as demonstrated by the fact that you're flaming him, not acting confused - so where's the problem?)

Back on topic: MMX is MultiMedia eXtensions. Is there a nice expansion for VIIV? As mentioned earlier, "II" could be Intel Inside, but the two Vs can't stand for much....

Re:MMX

[siliconjunkie]

I know the difference and mis-typed. Learn some manners in communicating with people over the net, mister AC.

Maybe they read this RFC

[TimmyDee]

. . . and got caught by the fever. [faqs.org]

Roman numerals aren't positional...

[curious.corn]

VIIV isn't VI(6E1)+IV(4E0). that's totally wrong. Romans used different letters to distinguish 1 (I), 5 (V), 10 (X), 50 (L), 100 (C), 500 (D), 1000 (M) You get magnitude relatives to the letter by subtracting (prefixing) or adding (postfixing) the preceding magnitude unit: 1 (I), 10(X), 100 (C) up to 3 symbols. That's a rough description mind you as this rule takes an exception on the 5* symbols which can't repeat (they're a sort of calculating cornerstone). Yeah it sucks, one wonders how they could get along commerce, taxes and precise civil engineering calculations with this method. So, an intel 64 should read "intel LXIV"... if they really intend to pursue this nomenclature we'll have a glorious laugh over here. (I'm typing from less than 1 mile away from the Appia Antica)

Re:Roman numerals aren't positional...

[AJWM]

Further, Roman numerals were simply a notation system for describing abacus tallies. It generally sucks to do math with Roman numerals unless you're doing it on an abacus, where it makes perfect sense.
(The upper row, above the bar, on an abacus stands for fives, the lower rows for units (or 50 and tens, 500 and hundreds, etc.)

Re:Roman numerals aren't positional...

[AJWM]

I meant to add:

So, given the above, the new Intel trademark stands for a chip that's about as good as a broken abacus.

Re:Roman numerals aren't positional...

[ckolar]

But you are not thinking like Roman. The numbers make sense if you remember that they would have used an abacus for calculations -- so IV would mean de-incriment the ones column and increment the fives. Here is a nice site [ryerson.ca] that talks a bit about the business aspects.

IV is a mediaeval invention

[Cardbox]

If you live that close to the Via Appia Antica then you can pop out and look at the tombs at lunchtime (give Cecilia Metella my love) and check the story I heard from a classics don that IV and IX and XL were mediaeval contracted notations for IIII VIIII and XXXX and the ancient Romans never used them.
Incidentally, Roman numerals were used in written contracts for quite a long time after we started using Arabic ones for calculation, because it was harder to alter the amounts fraudulently after they'd been w

It's the Pentium 64. But...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...they wrote a routine to convert binary to Roman but unfortunately they used a floating point divide on one of their own CPUs and for some reason the letters came out funny...

It's 801286, a Startrek 25th anniversary reference

[Stonent1]

VII+V=12
Spock: "A vintage 801286 of the mid 21st century. A fine museum piece."

Animated Screenshot [cmoo.com]

If it is the Pentium 64...

[Dizzle]

it should be Pentium IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIII. That would be cool plus everyone understands it immediately. Is there any confusion as to what this number is? No, there is not.

I'll get to the bottom of this...

[amichalo]

Let me take a stab at the origin of Intel's "VIIV" trademark...

...[does Google Search [google.com]]...

Oh, no worries, this is just the board of director's retreat [ile-yeu.com]. That crazy Intel board, working so hard. Deserves a break.

Paging Ronan Harris... Paging Ronan Harris

[Minwee]

Or maybe what they really want to do is start a new campaign based on the slogan "Intel VNV Nation" and this is just a first step.

It could happen.

Who now?

[Saeger]

Intel Inside VIIV? Who is VIVian and why is Intel inside her?

Two Pentium 4s. Here's why...

[doormat]

On the first generation of the dual core chips, they designed one processor core (a prescott with some interconnects between chips), and they mirror one of the cores backwards so that the interconnects line up. Thus VI is IV backwards. It also happens to be 64, thats just some synergy.

VIIV

[njfuzzy]

Conclusive proof that Intel's marketing guys are idiots.

80286 = "286"
80386 = "386"
80486 = "486"
80586 = "Pentium" (faux latin for "Five")
80686 = "Pentium II" (fault latin + roman numberals for five-two)

Followed by... (in no particular order)

Celeron = cheap processor, faux latin for "fast" (based on, well, a whole lot of different actual Pentium chips dumbed down)

Xenon = Noble gas... Totally inert

Pentium III

Pentium 4

Itanium

So, duhh... of course the next one is Pentium VIIV

Re:VIIV

[Slothy]

There is no Intel CPU called the Xenon. There is a family called Xeon though.

What?

[rbarreira]

From TFA:

Microprocessors, the central chip in computers, are among the most complex products ever produced by humankind, composed of hundreds of millions of microscopic switches that check e-mail and play video games.
Wow, so there are switches reading my e-mail and playing games when they should be processing? :(

I knew it all along...

[haelduksf]

Now Intel is admitting it! VI=6 V+I+I+V=12 (6+6) Thus, 666. Obviously. On an ironic sidenote, they will be hot as hell.

It's been Roman Numerals all along

[Namarrgon]

Ah, so clearly this is how the progression goes:

Pentium..........(original)
Pentium II.......(twice as good)
Pentium III......(3x as good)
Pentium IV......(4x as good)
Pentium M.......(1000x as good)
Pentium MMX.(2010x as good)

Apparently the Pentium III-M and IV-M were fairly good chips too.

Re:Learn you Roman numerals

[CyberBill]

VIIV... VI = 6 IV = 4 VIIV = 64 C'mon, seriously?

Re:Learn you Roman numerals

[tomhudson]

Hey tard knocker,

VI IV
is 6 4
Just like he said.

I pity the foo who don't know roman numerals.

Hey, according to the same logic, it could also be 7 5
or 5 2 5
or 5 1 4

... but it can't be any of those, including 6 4, because that's not how roman numerals are composed. VIIV is nonsense as a roman numeral.

Re:Learn you Roman numerals

[painandgreed]

... but it can't be any of those, including 6 4, because that's not how roman numerals are composed. VIIV is nonsense as a roman numeral.

And that is why they'd be able to trademark it. Can't trademark a number IIRC, which is why they opted for the Pentium name instead of 586. If it were actual Roman numerals, it would be a number and untrademarkable. Since it is nonsence, they can trademark it.

Sound like an explanatio to anybody else?

Re:Learn you Roman numerals

[Michael Woodhams]

But they could still trademark "Intel 64" and "Intel Inside 64", so what would be the point of the silly pseudo-Roman numerals?

I think they could also trademark a sufficiently unusual style of writing "64".

Re:Roman Numerals

[Samari711]

I bet the Romans are going to be pissed about this...

Re:Roman Numerals

[Anonymous Coward]

yes the Intelites are going to be crucified.

Re:Roman Numerals

[SILIZIUMM]

No, since the number was computed by that new Intel chip, VIIV really means 64 (hint: think of the Pentium bug).

Re:Errrr...

[rewt66]

Well, we mocked them when they picked the name "Pentium", too...

Re:intel Trademarks

[InfiniteWisdom]

iDoubt iT. iAm thinking iMac, iPod, iTunes. iThink iTs a different company

Re:intel Trademarks

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Actually, Intel possibly did, once. Since "80386," as a number, was ruled not trademarkable, the next processor was officially the "i486(TM)". 486 was, of course, still a number, so I(TM)ntel must have had the trademark on the letter i(TM).

Re:Pentium 8??

[OverlordQ]

Erm no? VIII is 8, VIIV makes absolutely no sense as a Roman Numeral.

I - 1
II - 2
III - 3
IV - 4
V - 5
VI - 6
VII - 7
VIII - 8
IX - 9
X - 10

see here [novaroma.org]

Re:Obvious: it's pornographic!

[diegocgteleline.es]

\/ \/ ||
You've a sick mind

Re:LXIV

[daveo0331]

And in 2030, you'll be able to sue the NFL for millions!

Re:VIIV = 2x P4's...

[magarity]

VI...IV - see, it's mirrored, hence 2 P4's.

Mirrored? As in the second one does the reverse of the first? Or mirrored as in RAID-0 where both do the same thing at the same time?

No, I think it's much more likely that it's a Pentium 6 with a Pentium 4 co-processor.