One should not waste a crisis' opportunity to innovate. "Toward the tail end of the oil shock of the early 1970s the first cell phone emerged, produced by Motorola. The second oil crisis in the 1980s eventually led to IBM's PC," said Anand Chandrasekher, manager of Intel's ultra mobility group.

Intel has eased its restrictions on netbook specifications, and will now allow screen sizes of 10-inch with a resolution of 1366x768, up from 10-inch and 1280x600.

Nokia's strategic relationship with Intel, announced last month, may be very forward-looking and not about to worry any incumbent wireless chipset suppliers, but it is nonetheless threatening to Europe's local hero, ARM Holdings.

In a possible breakthrough, chip giant Intel claims that it has pushed 193nm immersion lithography down to 15nm—at least in the lab.

"Even if they get just a piece of Nokia'ss business, it's a big deal," said Will Strauss, a Cave Creek, Arizona-based analyst for research firm Forward Concepts. "Nokia is still the biggest cell-phone maker in the world."

Intel is interested in building another chip manufacturing plant in southern Israel by 2012 at a cost of US$2.5 billion, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Monday.

The trademark dispute between Intel and Psion over the term "netbook" may be over following unconfirmed reports that the two companies have reached a settlement that lets other computer makers refer to their products as netbooks.

Corsair has announced that the 6GB Dominator GT 2000MHz CAS 8 has passed Intel's XMP-Ready certification for Core i7 Extreme Edition processors, making it the fastest memory kit to gain Intel's stamp of approval.