Atom is the new family of processors for Mobile Internet Devices.

It is based on an entirely new micro architecture designed specifically for small devices and low power, while maintaining the Intel Core 2 Duo compatibility. It supports for multiple threads.

It will be the Intel's smallest and lowest power processor. It will be manufactured on Intel's 45nm process technology.

The chips will consume about 0.6 - 2.5 watt and can scale up to 1.8 GHz clock speeds.



Learn more about Intel Atom Processor

I was gearing myself up for a nice scientific response then!

but this is equally as interesting, i dont know how many of you know but google and apple are either independently, or jointly looking into "cloud" computing (i think its called that) In which you wont have anything stored on your hard drive except perhaps an OS (But even that will be minimal and perhaps not on the hard drive) Instead all of your data will be stored on the internet in large servers ran by google similar to the way google docs works now. All you will hold in your hand will be a tiny machine with a CPU, some RAM and a hard drive big enough to hold the protocols and software needed to make an internet connection.

The reason i mention this is because these new processors could pave the way for such a scheme, not to mention the possibilities for extending laptop/PDA battery life and CPU power.

It will be interesting to see the battery life of laptops in the next year or so.

The "Cloud Computing would be useful for the third world laptops because they have basically no hard drive, just enough to run firefox and maybe a word proccessor. I however wouldn't buy anything but an ipod from apple because their software is flawed. I hve had 2 installation issues with itunes 7 for instance :@