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Three details - prices, speeds and feeds - are the last details Intel likes to release when introducing new parts, but thanks to a German e-tailer, some of those details are out.

Next year, the Clarkdale CPU family will hit the market. These will be 32nm dual-core - all codenames with "-dale" are dual-core, while "-field" codenames are quad core - and will have an integrated GPU on the die. The GPU core, however, will be 45nm.

They will be sold under the brand names Core i3-500 and Core i5-600. These will be fast little buggers right out of the gate, starting at 2.93GHz and climbing to 3.46GHz. All but the two low-end i3 processors will have Turbo Boost feature, where unused cores are turned off and extra horsepower is given to the ones in use.

For example, the Core i5-660 reportedly runs at 3.33GHz but in Turbo mode can hit 3.6GHz. The Core i5-670, a 3.46GHz part, can hit 3.73GHz.

The pricing is in Euros but sure looks appealing. The Core i3-530, the slowest of the CPUs, is 84.16 Euros, or US$126, while the high-end Core i5-670 is 205 Euros, or US$306.

All CPUs are 73 watt parts except the Core i5-661, which has a faster GPU, running at 900MHz instead of 733MHz like the other CPUs. It has a TDW of 87.

All of this is pretty impressive, given virtually every CPU is running at more than 3GHz and has a very high clock speed GPU on it. How they perform remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the Polish enthusiast site PCLab.pl has an in-depth review of Gulftown, a.k.a. the Core i9 processor, a 32nm, 6-core processor. The site benchmarked the processor against Core i7, Core i5, Core 2 Quad and AMD Pheonom II X4 and smoked all of them. Power consumption wasn't the best but its idle power draw was quite good.

Gulftown will be sold under the Xeon 5600 brand, so it's mostly a server processor, not a desktop part. The site said there were problems with the motherboard BIOS so don't take the numbers as gospel, but it looked like quite a performer.

Intel, as you would expect, declined to comment.

It looks like AMD and Globalfoundries are going to set up shop in Dubai after taking a hefty chunk of change from an investment firm based in the emirate. AMD CEO Dirk Meyer told Emirates Business that the firm is looking to a open chip design center in Dubai, and maybe a fabrication plant in Abu Dhabi.

"We have chip design centers around the world, including in India and China, and the capabilities by Dubai Silicon Oasis present interesting future opportunities. In time we will [design chips in the UAE], and it's hard to be specific on the time frame. There is a definite opportunity in such a partnership," said Meyer.

The Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA) is a proposed massive integrated technology park intended to create a Silicon Valley for the Middle East to lure offices for the major players in the semiconductor industry, except this would be design on the large scale like everything else in Dubai. The intention is to provide a giant "technology oasis" for all of these firms, with housing, commercial and other considerations all close to work.

But the first priority is a new Globalfoundries fab in Abu Dhabi. "The top priority for AMD is to deepen our partnership with ATIC and Globalfoundries, which continues to expand its partner pool to make sure that infrastructure in Abu Dhabi gets ready for a fabrication plant in the future," said Meyer.

Meyer went on to say that "as a company, we will want to participate fully in the market through our sales and marketing team and make sure people are IT savvy. Acquisitions are not on the agenda presently but could be a possibility over a period of time."

Such talk and interest is not surprising, given Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) owns approximately two-thirds of Globalfoundries' fully-converted common stock and a large chunk of AMD as well. AMD might be bankrupt by now were it not for the ATIC bailout. ATIC's sole shareholder is the government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, making it a state-owned investment firm.