We wonder if the 45nm problem is smaller than the problem with 65nm chips. Regardless of the answer to this philosophical question, Intel does have a huge issue with 45nm production.

The demand is incredibly big and Intel can't cope with it. There is a massive shortage of all dual and especially the mainstream quad-core 45nm Penryn chips.

It doesn't look that Intel will recover that easily and we believe that the shortage will affect a good part of the second quarter. The situation with dual core CPUs, such as the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 is not that critical, as you can buy one here or there and as of today you can most likely get a Core 2 Quad 9300 at 2.5GHz or even a 2.66GHz clocked Core 2 Quad 9450 with the whole 12MB of cache.

Both products were virtually nonexistent in Q1, but we hope that it will get better in Q2. After all, that is what one of the Intel’s directors has said to us on the record and we will try to believe in it.