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The chipmaker said Thursday it has entered into a definitive agreement to buy all of McAfee’s common stock at $48 per share in cash. The boards of both companies have approved the deal.

Security has become an essential element of online computing, on par with energy-efficient performance and connectivity, Intel said.

“With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in a statement. “In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences.

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The world’s largest chipmaker just wowed Wall Street and the tech world with its latest earnings report. The publicly-traded company reported a net income of $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, up an amazing 875% from its $234 million earnings in the fourth quarter of 2008. This more than beat Wall Street expectations.

While we won’t go into detail over the financial numbers (you can do that here PDF ), we do want to highlight some of the key stats:

- Revenues in Q4 2009 rose to $10.6 billion, a climb of 28% from $8.3 billion last year.

- However, if you look at the big picture, Intel had a better 2008 than 2009. 2009 revenues were $35.1 billion, while 2008 revenues reached $37.6 billion. That’s a 7% difference.

- Intel predicts revenues of approximately $9.7 billion in Q1 2010, above Wall Street estimates.

- Around a year ago, at the heart of the economic collapse, Intel decided to invest $7 billion into new chip plants. It looks to be paying off.

Intel’s Q4 report is one of the first to come out this year, but it won’t be the last. If Intel’s numbers are any indication though, we’re nearing the light at the end of the tunnel.

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The new chips will be based on the Nehalem microarchitecture, which cuts down on bottlenecks that plague its current chips. Nehalem chips are also able to execute more tasks while drawing less power.

An industry source with knowledge of Intel’s plans said the company will deliver new Xeon server processors belonging to the 5500 and 3500 chip families starting early August. Chip specifics weren’t immediately available.

A Digitimes report Monday also said that the chip giant will bring its latest chip microarchitecture to high-end mainstream desktops and laptops starting in September. The company will launch quad-core desktop chips code-named Lynnfield in early September, followed by quad-core laptop chips code-named Clarksfield later in the month, according to the report, which cited industry sources.

Intel officials declined comment, saying the company doesn’t talk about rumors. “But I can say that Lynnfield and Clarksfield are on track for second half 2009 production,” an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail.

The Lynnfield and Clarksfield chips will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, according to Intel’s road map, and should be shipped before its shift to the more efficient 32-nm manufacturing process later this year.

The company will also launch chips for new ultrathin laptops — the Celeron SU2300 and Celeron 743 processors — in September, according to the Digitimes report.

This will be the first time Nehalem-based chips will reach mainstream audiences, after being mainly reserved for expensive systems like servers and gaming PCs. Nehalem integrates a memory controller into a CPU and provides a faster pipe for the processor to communicate with system components like a graphics card and other chips. It also allows execution of two software threads simultaneously, so a system with four processor cores could run eight threads simultaneously for quicker application performance. The chips will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process.

While the new Nehalem chips may be limited to desktops and laptops on the higher price band, affordably priced systems could see new chips when Intel switches to the 32-nm process. The 32-nm chips will integrate a graphics processor and CPU in one chip, which could boost graphics performance while drawing less power than existing processors.

Source: PC World