Today at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel CEO Paul Otellini affirmed that the company’s first 45nm processor, based on the Penryn core, will be officially introduced on November this year.

"We expect our Penryn processors to provide up to a 20 percent performance increase while improving energy efficiency," said Otellini. "Intel's breakthrough 45nm silicon process technology allows us to provide low-cost, extremely low-power processors for innovative small form factor devices while delivering high-performance, multi-core, multi-featured processors used in the most advanced systems."
The chips will be available earlier anticipated and could beat AMD's 65nm Phenom to the market. Otellini didn't explicitly reveal the first processor's assignment, but according to a report, it will be the 130W Core 2 Extreme QX6850, a four-core part running at 3GHz on a 1333MHz frontside bus and with a massive 12MB of L2 cache on board.

The Penryn launch will be followed by the Nehalem micro-architecture launch next year. This major redesign will feature the QuickPath Interconnect system architecture, which includes an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components. While Nehalem will use 45nm silicon process technology at launch, Intel plans to move to 32nm production in 2009.