No doubt an attempt to keep up with Intel and its Gulftown i9 CPU, AMD have just confirmed their Hexa-Core Thuban CPU which will be released next year.

What most people were not expecting though was the fact that the new CPU will be backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ motherboards.

An AMD spokesman said “We are all about platform longevity and long-lived upgrade paths,”. This seems to be the opposite attitude to Intel who seem happy to release new sockets and ruining the chance for upgrades.

At the moment Intel have 3 consumer sockets 775,1156, and 1366. None of these are compatible with each other whereas AMD has 2 sockets that have backwards compatibility.

AMD’s chip is codenamed Thuban and will feature all six cores based on the 45nm fabrication process. Thuban will feature an integrated DDR3 controller and have 3MB of L2 and 6MB of L3 cache.

There is no word on clock speeds nor specific branding though it is expected to be Phenom II X6.