The nice folks over at Thorn Micro Technologies have developed an awesome new laptop fan - the RSD5. It is a solid state fan (no moving parts!) that uses an electrical current to generate airflow. More airflow, in fact, than standard mechanical fans.

While typical mechanical fans generate a breeze of 0.7 - 1.7 meters per second, the RSD5 can output a cooler 2.7 meters per second. What’s more impressive is that it stays completely silent while cranking out this kind of airflow.

One of the best things about this fan is that it’s the size of a microchip. The researchers who developed it are hoping to one day build these solid state fans directly into other chips, creating self-cooling processors and other chips that stay cool on their own. The new fan is very cool (no pun intended), but it would be interesting to see what kind of effect this would have on laptop battery life.

DigiTimes is reporting that, according to several sources, Intel is planning on launching the world’s first quad-core CPU for laptops - the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 - in Q3 of 2008.

Starting at an initial price of $1,038 (yes, that’s probably more than the price of the average laptop today), Intel doesn’t expect quad-core CPUs to become standard in laptops until late 2009. Even that, we think, is a conservative estimate. Dual-core CPUs are more than enough for most applications today, and it will be hard to find applications that can utilize all four cores in the near future.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will be manufactured in a 45nm process and will run at 2.53GHz. It will feature a 12MB L2 cache.

Tech jargon aside, this thing will be very fast for a laptop processor, assuming that operating systems and programs can utilize all of its power. At those prices though, don’t expect to see the processor from mainstream manufacturers such as HP and Dell any time soon.

IBM has announced details of a smaller, lower-power version of their Cell BE processor. Yup, that’s the same bad boy that powers your PS3.

The current Cell is manufactured on a 65nm process but the new one will be made with a next-generation 45nm process. The new Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its big brother and have a 34 percent smaller die area. This in turn means that the chip will run cooler, which means less cooling by the console resulting in a cheaper and more reliable PS3.

Unfortunately, no one knows if Sony will decide to pass on the savings to the consumer or keep the extra profit for themselves. It could be a while before a cheaper PS3 actually hits the shelves. Hopefully, though, this is sooner than later because at current prices the PS3 is still a bit hard to afford.

As you may know, the MacBook Air uses specially developed Intel Core 2 Duo chips that are much smaller than regular chips. These processors may soon start appearing in other PCs as well. The chips could potentially be used to create competition for “the world’s thinnest and lightest notebook” (which as far we’re concerned is fantastic news - anything that pushes the market and the industry forward through competition is highly welcomed).

Company names weren’t specified, but as of now there are 2 manufacturers already working the design into their next machine.

We look forward to seeing what kinds of portable and lightweight laptops will come out of this, as they will have a hard time competing with the good looks and classiness of the MacBook Air.