Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture derived, Core i7 CPUs, are expected to break water before the turn of the year and today, Fudzilla has contributed a waft of information to clarify the state of play.

Firstly, it appears that hopes of DDR2 support finding its way over to the Nehalem platform, have been dashed, according to information received from the Chief Architect for Nehalem. It is surmised that when mainstream derivatives see the light of day in 2009, DDR3 prices will have become more affordable and together with the move to an on die memory controller, Intel is claimed to have closed the door on the DDR2 era.

Westmere, a 32nm refresh of Nehalem, is also expected before the close of 2009, according to this report. We can expect Westmere to be an optimised and tweaked refresh of its Nehalem foundations, lowering TDP and featuring a selection of other improvements.

Last but not least, further to our report from last week, Fudzilla has confirmed that all Bloomfield SKUs will indeed feature a 130W TDP. Apparently, the over exaggerated rating for the 2.66GHz part, at least, could open the door for extra headroom when the Turbo feature is utilised.