The wait for Intel’s next generation ATOM processor seems to be finally over. Intel is finally going to unveil the latest ATOM CPU that is smaller and more energy efficient than its predecessors. In case you haven’t noticed, most netbooks on the market come with ATOM N270 and N280. The new ATOM N450 is 60 percent smaller than previous generation processors and consumes 20% less energy, so you can expect to get even more hours of battery life on N450 netbooks.

N450 processor is also slightly faster when it comes to processing and handles more processor intensive tasks better. In the meantime, you shouldn’t expect this CPU to handle HD and more complex tasks any better than previous ATOM processors. So don’t expect to run Maya 3D animation software and have success with it on your netbook. Anil Nanduri puts it best:

These are not meant for hooking a Blu-ray player to it

Of course, dual core CPUs for netbooks are on the way as well. So before long, we are going to have netbooks that are as capable of some of the fully-fledged laptops on the market. The new ATOM CPU is certainly a decent improvement over its predecessors in the graphics department but the best is yet to come. There is a lot of room left for improvement.