Lenovo & Fujitsu use MacBook Air chip

Lenovo and Fujitsu are planning to launch notebooks which use the same chip as Apple’s new super-thin MacBook Air notebook.

Intel designed the special Core 2 Duo chip at Apple’s request, especially for MacBook Air. The space saving Core 2 Duo uses significantly less power than conventional notebook chips, and is ideal for ultraportable notebooks of 3 pounds in weight or less.

Lenovo and Fujitsu have already started developing systems featuring the Core 2 Duo chip, which Intel offered to other computer manufacturers after Apple launched MacBook Air at the Macworld event.

Intel itself will use much of the technology in the chip in its Montevina platform, which is due for release later in 2008.

Small notebooks, such as Lenovo’s ThinkPad, and Fujitsu’s LifeBook, tend to use low-voltage or ultra-low-voltage versions of Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors to fit into the limited space available.

This significantly reduces processing power, compared with the regular Core 2 Duo chip.

Although there is still a drop in performance with Intel’s special Core 2 Duo chip, performance is compromised to a much lesser extent than with the low-voltage or ultra-low-voltage versions.

The new Lenovo and Fujitsu laptops are expected to be out shortly.