The Nehalem family of processors is on track for 2008 but, although some we're expecting and hoping to see it as soon as possible, it will only arrive (and fall on AMD's head) in the last quarter of 2008. The Nehalem CPUs will bring quite a lot of improvements and new features including the wannabe HyperTransport killer named Quick Path Interconnect and integrated memory controllers and a successor of HyperThreading.

The first Nehalem processors to be released will be dual- and quad-cores aimed at the server and desktop market while octa-cores are now rumored to have slipped into 2009, together with the CPUs boasting an integrated graphics core. All Nehalem CPUs will be manufactured on 45nm and are most likely to compete with AMD's K10.5 45nm parts.