Intel seems to be on its way to start phasing out the majority of its 65 nm Xeon DP processor generation, at least that's what the company said to its partners. The move should make room for the new 45 nm CPUs. From the total of 16 CPUs, 11 are put on an end line, while the others are subject to a transition to a new and more power-efficient pattern.

The current quarter is the first during which Intel expects having the 45 nm processors manufactured at a larger scale than the 65 nm ones. This reveals the reason why the Santa Clara company began removing the 65 CPUs from its product list. It seems that 11 of the remaining 16 Woodcrest processors were announced to be nixed on a product change notification. Also, Intel's partners have to place by October 10 non-cancelable orders. January 16, 2009 is the last date when orders can still be made, while shipments are expected to end by July 12, 2011.

Intel managed to regain a lot of market share with its 65 nm dual-core Woodcrest and quad-core Clovertown processors, which proved powerful competitors to Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron CPU. The two processors will be replaced by the 45 nm 5400-series chips featuring a Harpertown core.

Some of the Woodcrest CPUs will still be available, including the E5130 (2.0 GHz) model. Yet, the processor will suffer the transition to G-0 stepping. According to Intel, "certain" models will undergo "some amount of C1E power reduction", which will end up in an increase in the overall energy efficiency. At this moment, it is uncertain whether Intel plans to adjust the 65 watt TDP rating of the chip, but it seems that the company does not intend to change its current power rating unless the CPU hits 40 watts. Intel's Enhanced Virtualization Technology, APIC Task Priority Register (TPR) Virtualization, as well as NMI-window exiting, will be introduced through the G-stepping.