Motherboard manufacturers report that AMD may be moving up the launch of its upcoming K8L processor from Q1 2008 to Q3 2007.

Apparently the processor, code named Altair, is a 65nm device with clock speeds ranging from 2.7GHz to 2.9GHz. Each core will apparently have 128KB of L1 cache (half code, half data), a 512KB L2, and access to the 2MB (and possibly 4MB according to past reports) L3 cache. They are expected to launch in third quarter of next year, under the Athlon 64FX and Athlon64x4 labels (for 4x4 systems).

While the K8L is expected to adopt the new Hypertransport 3.0 specification, apparently the parts will also be available for existing AM2 motherboards, and socket AM3 has been pushed back to middle of 2008 - K8L will apparently launch as a socket AM2 and AM2+ part (AM2+ is apparently a transitional socket between AM2 and AM3 - logically it will probably be just a speed bump without changing pinout; current socket AM2 parts have shown the ability to run Hypertransport at 1.3-1.5GHz, well over the official 1.0GHz specification; so an officially supported 1.5GHz Hypertransport speed late next year makes sense). Socket AM3 will apparently support the new Hypertransport 3 specification. DDR3 adoption will also be delayed, as it requires the new socket AM3.

65nm socket AM2 parts are expected to start becoming available next month, and apparently AMD expects to change over production for 90% of the parts it ships to 65nm by the end of 2007 - including all of its dual core processors. AMD is also expected to start producing 45nm parts by the middle of 2008 - which is probably related to the recent announcement by IBM that is has made its first 45nm wafer (AMD and IBM signed a 45nm technology agreement earlier). Intel is still expected to beat AMD to producing 45nm processors.