AMD is playing catch-up this year, coming in significantly late to market with 45nm processors. The company has a large number of 45nm chips on the schedule for release sometime this year, and recent rumors indicate the company has a line of six 45nm “business-class” desktop CPUs in the works, due sometime in the third quarter.

The CPUs are expected to be under the Athlon and Phenom families, starting with a 2.9GHz dual-core Athlon X2 B23. Triple-core and quad-core parts are included in the lineup, all under Phenom II. One interesting thing to note is that the expected clock speeds for the business-class CPUs are all under 3GHz, despite the processors being manufactured with a 45nm process and 3GHz already proved to work on their existing 65nm architecture.

We'll not get an answer from AMD on why this is the case, though they may just be planning to release faster CPUs at a later date.