Yesterday at an IDF in Beijing, Intel released the more mobile varient of their Core architecture based mobile processor, the Core Solo. Two versions of this Ultra Low Voltage processor, the Core Solo ULV, were announced, the U1300 running at 1.06GHz and the U1400 running at 1.2GHz. As you can imagine, ULV chips are the ideal processor to manufacture into an ultraportable notebook due to their low power requirements. I currently use a 3lb Dell Inspiron 300m which uses the older generation Pentium-M 1.2GHz ULV. I can say that it makes for some stellar battery life. However, the U1300 and U1400's are rather unique in that at peak load, they use only 5.5 watts.
5.5 watts is small enough of a heat output that notebook manufacturers won't even have to include a cooling fan and can cool the processor passively. This translates into quieter and smaller computers. To give you an idea of how miniscule 5.5 watts is, the Prescott based Pentium 4 desktop processors created over 100 watts, with the upcoming Conroe at 65 watts. The standard Core Duo is said to be under 25 watts. Expect to see ULV Core Solo based laptops emerge within the next month or two.