Intel's New Superefficient-But-Fast Laptop Core i5 Chips on Jan. 7 [Intel]

Intel's dropping a big bowl o' chips January 7th—17 of 'em—like the first lower-end Core i3 chips, but we're most excited about the Arrandale Core i5 for laptops: still fast but more efficient 'cause they're shrunk to 32nm.
Remember all the excitement about Penryn a couple years ago, which took the Core 2 and made it more efficient with a new manufacturing process? It's the same deal here, as the tick of Intel's tick-tock cycle. "Tock" is a whole new microarchitecture, while "tick" is a die shrink of that, which makes it more power efficient. Nehalem is the tock—it was 45 nanometers—and Westmere is the tick, shrunk to 32nm.
Arrandale is what this set of mobile Core i5 chips, based on Westmere, is called. (Here's our primer on Intel codenames.) One thing in particular about Arrandale is that it has a graphics core built right onto the main chip package, which Intel says is good to go for Blu-ray.
Anyways, what all this means is that there's about to be a whole bunch of new laptops with faster, better Intel chips inside that won't munch your battery as hard.
[Gizmodo via Cnet]

Intel starts production on its versatile 32-nanometer chips

Intel has started to produce the ultra-dense 32-nanometer chips it needs to bring about the next generation of processors. What's that mean for you and me? Well, two things, depending on the architecture of the 32nm chips: faster computers, phones and more, or ones that use less energy.
That's because Intel is focusing on "systems on a chip" production (or SoCs), which allows the company to tweak each chip depending on what it's going into. Raw power is fine for computers, for instance, but specialty instances of the processors — such as in phones and cars — require a little something different.
It's also this SoC-oriented approach that represents a departure for Intel, as the company will try to offer a variety of components it doesn't normally include in the manufacturing process. This shift in direction is thanks, in part, to the $7 billion the company has invested to adapt its US plants for 32nm manufacturing.
Intel wants to be the first to bring the 32nm technology to the market, with chips going into computers and electronics by the end of this year, and opening up the 32nm SoC line early next year.
The 45nm chips we use now aren't dead, however, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In the meantime, Intel next week plans to discuss Jasper Forest, a 45-nanometer SoC targeted at products such as communications and data-storage equipment. On Thursday, it is expected to follow up with Sodaville, another 45-nanometer chip for digital TVs, set-top boxes and media players that combines its Atom microprocessor with circuitry for graphics, video and other functions.

Via the Wall Street Journal