Confirmed by AMD in September, the Thuban hexa-core desktop processor seems to have had its release date brought forward, with the latest reports saying that the chip will hit stores in Q2 (2010) and not Q3 as previously thought.

Thuban, which will probably be known as Phenom II X6, features and AM3 packaging, is built on 45nm technology, has six cores and an integrated memory controller, 3MB (512kB per core) L2 and 6MB of (shared) L3 cache, and is said to start off clocked at 2.8 GHz. Currently AMD's quad-cores have reached 3.4 GHz (Phenom II X4 965 BE) but the hexa-core has to settle for less in order to keep the TDP in check (at 140W tops). No word on Thuban's pricing just yet but there's time for a leak about that too.