Surprise! Next-gen Intel Pentium and Celeron chips are coming soon

The chip maker will release a new generation of Pentium and Celeron chips, code-named Apollo Bay, in the second half this year.

The chips will appear in low-cost laptops and desktops, and are based on a new, low-power CPU architecture code-named Goldmont. Future Atom chips will also be based on Goldmont.

The Apollo Bay processors will offer better CPU and graphics performance and longer battery life, Intel executives said at the Intel Developer Forum in Shenzhen, China.

Entry-level PCs usually come with Pentium or Celeron chips, and prices go up when they're configured with faster Core chips.

The Apollo Bay chips will succeed existing Pentium and Celeron N3000 chips, also called Braswell. Braswell, based on the older Airmont architecture, were used in low-end laptops, Chromebooks and even some tablets.

Intel will also shipping new Core chips based on a new Kaby Lake architecture in the second half the year. The Apollo Bay chips will have fewer memory, multimedia and I/O features.