According to recent rumors, AMD plans to release its first 45nm-based desktop processors in early 2009. The company will showcase its next generation CPUs, codenamed Deneb, on the 8th of January, on the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show or CES. Sources close to the company state that the new chips produced using the 45nm process technology will offer substantially higher performance due to larger cache and architectural improvements.

 

The first destkop processors to use the 45nm process technology will be part of the AMD Phenom X4 CPUs and will be clocked at 2.8GHz and 3.00GHz. They will provide support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, but initial chips will only support DDR2 PC2-8500 memory. This is a result of the chip's support for current AM2 socket.

 

Despite the chip's 45nm process technology, they will not provide a better power consumption, when compared to the company's current Phenom X4 processors, which are built on 65nm technology. According to sources, the new chips are expected to feature a 125W TDP (thermal design power), much like some of AMD's current 65nm-built quad-core Phenom processors. On the bright side, the new chips will deliver better performance-per-watt ratio compared to its predecessors.

 

The news hasn't been confirmed yet by the Sunnyvale-based chip maker, which earlier this year said that its code-named Shanghai and Deneb CPUs would be able to offer higher instructions per clock, compared to the company's current Phenom and Opteron processor lineup. This, combined with a larger L3 cache, should enable the processors to deliver considerably higher speed than any other quad-core processor from AMD.

 

Unfortunately, there are no specific details regarding pricing, but according to the company, prices will be influenced by offers from competitors as well as market conditions.