Intel's first 'Nehalem' architecture mobile processors may appear sooner than planned, with three chips arriving late Q3 or early Q4.

The CPUs in question are 'Clarksfield' parts, quad-core notebook chips fabbed at 45nm. All three use Intel's HyperThreading technology to increase the number of cores the host OS sees to eight.

According to unnamed moles cited by DIgiTimes, come the end of September or the beginning of October, two mainstream Clarksfields, the 1.6GHz Core 2 Quad P1 and the 1.73GHz Core 2 Quad P2 will appear on the chip giant's price list.

So too with the 2GHz Core 2 Extreme XE.

The chips are expected to contain 8MB of L1-L3 cache and on-board memory and PCI Express 2.0 controllers. They'll hook up to a mobile version of Intel's 'Ibex Peak' I/O chip over Nehalem's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) bus.

A couple of Celeron parts based on older, Core 2 tech will debut in the same timeframe. Unlike the Clarksfields, they will be aimed at thin'n'light laptops.

Intel's first mobile processor to incorporate a graphics core within the processor package - a 32nm dual-core CPU codenamed 'Arrandale' - is expected to be launched in Q1 2010. ®