IDF Intel's first four-core processors for notebooks will debut in Q3 2008, it has been claimed. That narrows the release window down from the previous forecast: sometime in the second half of the year.

Motherboard-maker moles spilled the beans to DigiTimes, confirming what we've heard before: the 45nm chips will contain 12MB of L2 with each core pair sharing 6MB, they'll run on a 1066MHz frontside bus and consume up to 45W of power.

That's the main reason why they won't feature in 'Montevina', the next generation of Intel's Centrino platform and yesterday revealed to be shipping out of the chip maker's warehouses in May 2008. The quad-cores will require different notebook thermal designs than those laid down for the dual-core 45nm chips that will be part of Montevina.

Intel is expected to launch 11 45nm mobile processors in the first half of 2008, all codenamed, like the architecture they're based on, 'Penryn'. Five will be launched in Q1: a gaming-oriented Core 2 Extreme and four regular parts. Three more mainstream Core 2s will accompany the Montevina launch, along with three low voltage, 25W parts, as announced by Intel yesterday.