We wouldn't be terribly upset if Intel up and decided to retire its Celeron brand, as has been rumored on occasion. In fact, notebook players at one point were supposedly told Intel would gradually reduce production of Celeron chips in 2011 and replace them with Pentium and dual-core Atom N series processors. Based on Intel's latest roadmap, it doesn't appear the Celeron brand is going anywhere.

A lot can happen in the span of one year in the technology world. If we were to rewind the clock 12 months, we'd still be looking ahead to AMD's recently launched Llano desktop APUs, LulzSec would't be on anyone's radar, News Corp. would still own MySpace, and you'd still be able to play real-money poker on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. That's how quickly the technology world spins, so it's not all that surprising to see Intel retire four processors that are only a year old.

Quick, what's the first thing you think of when you hear the word "Celeron?" Some of you will undoubtedly answer "overclocking" in reference to socket 478 Celeron chips from over a decade ago. That was a long time ago, and some of you are waiting for the day when Intel finally retires the Celeron brand. If that's you, you'll have to wait a little longer. The Santa Clara chip maker is reportedly getting ready to release at least three more Celeron chips based on Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture, all of which will end up in notebooks.

If you're jonesin' for a low-cost Sandy Bridge processor and aren't put off by the Celeron brand, hang tight, Intel has you covered. The Santa Clara chip giant is reportedly working on a batch of 32nm Celeron chips to ship in the third quarter of 2010.

Details are pretty weak at the moment, but according to Web chatter, there's a good shot these will come with the graphics core enabled. That means you'll be getting a dual-core processor with integrated graphics for as low as $50, the starting price of these upcoming parts.

As it stands, current Celeron parts are still being built around the 45nm Wolfdale architecture and don't include a graphics core.