AMD has confirmed that 45nm process six-core processors, codenamed Thuban, for consumer desktop
platform will be released, as reported by Maximum PC. Not only that, AMD also confirmed that these six-core (hexa-core) processors would be backward compatible with AM3 and AM2+ Socket motherboards. This hexa-core chip will arrive next year.This confirmation came on Sept. 21, exactly a day before Intel Developer Forum that starts. Well, Intel's six-core 32nm Gulftown chips got delayed to second quarter 2010.It was rumored that AMD was working on six-core processors for a while but the official confirmation came out yesterday. AMD will bring six-core Thuban processors on 45nm silicon die and will feature integrated DDR3 memory controller just like the Phenom II and Athlon II chips. The CPU clock speeds might not be as high as the current Phenom II X4 processors due to the two additional cores that will add to the thermal output. AMD's Thuban chips are expected to have 3MB L2 Cache and 6MB of L3 Cache. Intel's Gulftown chip would have 12MB of shared L3 Cache and would be compatible with LGA 1366 Socket since they're the follow-up of the 32nm Westmere-based Core i7 family chips. The biggest news is that Thuban chips would be backward compatible, unlike Intel's socket architecture. Intel currently follows three different socket architectures - LGA 775, LGA 1366 and LGA 1156 - all of them are incompatible.AMD hasn't revealed what the new hexa-core processors would be called but just Phenom II chips, we believe that Phenom II X6 would be tagged to them.
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