"We already have a functional link running in the lab, and we are aggressively moving to higher bandwidths, " said Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab.

WSJ: IBM Claims Breakthrough in Laser-Based Chips

"This was one of our little secrets that we didn't want to disclose, " says Robert Knighten, peer-to-peer evangelist with Intel's Enterprise Architecture Lab, which develops software for big systems.

FORBES: Sharing Power

Enric Herrero, a research scientist at Intel Labs in Barcelona, said the lab is working on finding new ways to use and manage many cores in mobile devices.

FORBES: Intel Paves The Path Into The Post-PC Era

And Intel even agreed to help fund a mobile device lab with Nokia ( NOK) in Oulu, Finland, in recent weeks.

FORBES: Intel Needs To Get A Grip On Smart Devices

Negroponte, who formerly headed up the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agrees, but says Intel is thwarting sales of OLPC's XO laptop by selling a similar product, Classmate, in the same markets.

FORBES: Magazine Article

This one delves pretty deep into head-scratching territory, but it looks like the folks at Invisible Things Lab have discovered an exploit that could open the door to some potentially serious attacks on certain Intel CPUs paired with some popular motherboards.

ENGADGET: New SMM exploit targets Intel CPU caching vulnerability