On Wednesday, announced it has made a major leap in advancing chip technology: . The new technology, expected to make PCs, and tabletsfaster and more power-efficient, are slated to make their first appearance when Intel moves to 22-nanometer chips next year.

Instead of building traditional, flat two-dimensional transistors, the new transistors will be built upward, allowing Intel to squeeze in more transistors while maintaining density and a small chip size.

That means new chips using the 3D transistors, which use less than half the power of 2D transistors, will be as much as 37% faster than Intel's current 32nm chips.

So, what does this mean for Intel? Well, of course it is a huge boost for Intel in its efforts to keep up with Moore's Law, the 42-year-old prediction made by Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years.

But the advancement also means that Intel may now have a shot at working its way into the lucrative tablet and markets, which has eluded Intel and been a treasure trove for rival ARM's processors.