What with the likes of the Apple MacBook Air and similar ultrathin laptops in production, Intel is recognising that there will be an increasing problem with heat, especially with its new chips around the corner. Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group was speaking at a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei.

When you design a very thin system, cooling the skin is a very big challenge... If you put [a laptop] on your lap, it can feel very uncomfortable. Very hot.

Eden went on to say that if this problem is not addressed there will be a limit as to how thin a laptop can me made. They used the example of a jet engine explaining that the high temperatures inside the engine (up to 1000 degrees centigrade) must not be transfered to the plane's wing, as that is where the fuel is stored. The technology used on aircraft to accomplish this is called laminar airflow cooling, which is what Intel plans license to manufacturers for use in cooling its products, it is a system in which a fluid flows in layers.
Fortunately this is not the only trick up Intel's sleeve, Eden also explained that laptop platform for Intel's Nehalem architecture will have the memory controller, IGP and CPU all on one die and that the native power saving features will allow processor cores to turn on and off without the use of software.

[It is done] automatically on the fly. It is transparent to the operating system