Intel discontinues Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs

Intel plans to discontinue several Sandy Bridge core i7 microprocessors, including quad-cores for mainstream notebooks, and a few dual-core CPUs for thin-and-light mobile devices. Affected part and S-spec numbers, as well as end-of-life dates, were published in a Product Change Notification, that was released today. Specifically, Intel is going to retire Core i7-2617M, i7-2629M, i7-2649M and i7-2657M LV/ULV microprocessors, tray (OEM) versions of Core i7-2720QM, i7-2820QM and i7-2920XM, and boxed Core i7-2760QM and i7-2860QM. The aforementioned parts can be ordered until February 18, 2013, and tray chips will ship until August 13, 2013. All discontinued tray Core i7s were introduced in January - February 2011, and boxed i7-2760QM and i7-2860QM were available since last September.

Today's discontinuation notice is not the first this month. Last week Intel published another PCN for Core i5-2380P, i5-2450P and i5-2550K desktop CPUs. One common thing between three chips is the lack of integrated GPU. The GPU-less Core i5s were released in January 2012, and they will be end-of-lifed on February 22, 2013. The processors will ship until August 9, 2013.