Intel is treating the new Celeron as a one-off. The chipmaker manufactures special-edition processors for individual manufacturers frequently. It created another special-edition chip, a 1.6GHz Celeron, for Sony's Vaio W desktop Processor.

Intel hasn't yet made public whether it plans to offer a full line of Celerons like the Ultra Low Voltage Celeron 600MHz A, but the processor could again predict the future of Intel's mobile chips.

Intel built the Celeron A for Sony by reconfiguring the Pentium M processor to strip it of features like SpeedStep technology. SpeedStep lowers voltage and clock speed to save power while the computer is running off the battery. Intel also cut the chip's level 2 cache in half, from 1MB to 512KB. The cache improves performance by storing frequently accessed data close to the processor core.

The changes follow a traditional path Intel uses to create a Celeron chip. The current mobile Celeron chip line, for example, is a version of the Pentium 4-M mobile chip with lower clock speed, no SpeedStep and 256KB of level 2 cache, instead of the Pentium 4-M's 512KB.