So with the glut of netbook news, and the recent news of AMD and VIA both putting out rather impressive CPUs, it appears that Intel has finally shared the tiny CPU that powers Apple’s MacBook Air with the rest of the OEMs. The Air, as everyone knows, is rather thin (thin enough to cut a cake) and Apple has flaunted its diminuitive belt size.

Of course, with the worldwide release of these CPUs to manufacturers we may see more competition for Apple’s subnotebook, and while that’s certainly interesting, I’m picturing one of these in the netbook form factor.

I’m not sure how viable this is, though, because the 65nm Merom based Core 2 Duo flat out generates more heat than the comparable Atom at the same 1.6 ghz (although the Core 2 Duo also outperforms the Atom. Now, while Apple obviously figured out how to make it work in a thin machine, I’m not sure the other manufacturers could put one in a netbook without having to charge a similar premium.

Therefore, the introduction of lower clocked CPU at 1.2 ghz with lower power requirements could give the netbooks a kick in the pants that would take them out of the “hey, it works and does everything I need it to, aside from anything that requires a lot of processing power” level to “hey, I can watch Flash movies in fullscreen” level. Lenovo and HP have already stated they intend to use some variant of these CPUs in current machines, but news of their use in a netbook is still in question at this time.

There’s a couple of other interesting factors to consider with this. One is obvious: the Core 2 Duo parts use faster memory. That’s a good thing for performance, but can mean a little more heat generation and possibly more power draw. The other, however, is that this could mean going to a less-shackled platform than the Atom’s, and thus, a better video card. Hooray for possibilities!

ArsTechnica has more details on Intel’s announcement.