AMD has confirmed that they are developing a triple core Phenom processor. The "Toliman" core, to be released during the first quarter of 2008, is essentially a quad-core Phenom with one core disabled. AMD's roadmap also revealed a second "Heka" triple-core processor in 2009, plus a next-gen "Regor" dual-core chip in 2009, also.

Several key questions still remain to be answered, aside from the pricing of the new chip. For one thing, there will be the branding: the rumored "Phenom X2" designation will most likely not be used; the product simply will be known as a three- or triple-core Phenom microprocessor, Moorhead said privately after a Monday briefing with reporters... The additional three-core chip also made smart business sense, AMD executives explained: if one of the four cores failed to achieve its rated speed, the company would either have to clock the entire chip down or simply discard the part. In what an AMD spokesman called a hypothetical example, AMD could launch a 2.8-GHz tri-core Phenom as well as a 2.6-GHz quad-core chip. AMD will continue to use model numbers to indicate relative performance, he added.