Branding and branding messages are extremely important. Upon the announcement of the celeron, my thoughts were about celery and "a processor on a diet." With the release of the Atom family of processors, previously known by their code names Silverthorne and Diamondville, Intel has the branding correct. A small processor designed for Mobile PCs is what the industry has needed for about a year. Intel believes netbooks and nettops are also growing markets for the processors. OK. They didn't really think about those last two terms - but at least the idea of products becoming net-centric is correct.

According to the press release, "Up to 11 Intel Atom processor die -- the tiny slivers of silicon packed with 47 million transistors each -- would fit in an area the size of an American penny."

• new microarchitecture designed specifically for small devices and low power
• support for multiple threads for better performance and increased system responsiveness
• 45nm process with hi-k metal gate technology
• thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5 watt range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo instruction set compatibility

Scott Ferguson loves the branding, too, calling the branding scheme truly atomic. He states:

The two processors that make up the new Atom line are Silverthorne, which is designed for MIDs, and Diamondville, which the company plans to include in low-cost PCs such as its own Classmate PC and the Asus Eee PC.

Hopefully, this new branding does not cause new consumer confusion - which processor is the best to purchase inside of a Mobile PC?