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Xbitlabs reports that Intel is preparing to ramp up Sandy Bridge production aggressively. We haven't heard much about Sandy Bridge's branding, but the report suggests Intel will continue to use the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 branding. However, considering the three number suffix is occupied by the Nehalem/Westmere generation, Intel will certainly have to revise the nomenclature. The first Sandy Bridge products - aimed at the mainstream with upto 4 cores - releases in Q1 2011 is aimed at a 12%-13% share on launch. Pentium is expected to continue living as Intel's highest volume product - with a crippled 2 core Sandy Bridge being branded as Pentium for the budget entry level market.

One of the primary points of focus of Sandy Bridge would be efficiency. Products will be available in 65W TDP (dual core, quad core) and 95W TDP (performance quad core). While performance improvements over the Nehalem generation will not be significant (barring applications using AVX), Sandy Bridge would make up for it with higher clock speeds at lower power consumption. The first Sandy Bridge processors will fit into a new socket LGA 1155, based on 6-series motherboards. Thus, upgrading to Sandy Bridge would require buying a new motherboard as well.

The high end Sandy Bridge products - upto 8 cores - will release later in 2011, and will be designed for the new LGA 2011 socket.

The LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge products are well on track for a early 2011 release. As has happened in the past, we may even have the CPUs selling as early as December 2010 in the shady South East Asian markets who aren't interested in keeping release dates.

Sandy Bridge's competitor, AMD Fusion (Llano) will also release in early 2011.

Reference: Xbitlabs