Since an important part of my thesis is a mobile, low-power CPU (like the Atom) that is able to perform a large number of floating point operations per second, I was excited when I heard about Intel's new Atom, the N450 "Pinetrail". In my experimentation the FPU in the N270, the processor used in the vast majority of netbooks currently available, is disappointingly weak. Unfortunately, the benchmarks that have been released over the past two days with the official launch of the Pinetrail CPU reveal that the new model shows no significant improvement in terms of floating-point arithmetic tests. The major architectural changes are the integration of the memory controller and graphics controller onto the CPU die, but apparently no significant upgrades in the core units. The relevant page of one of the benchmarks (there are many other pages) here:

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus-Eee-PC1005PE-Atom-N450-Pinetrail-Platform-Launch/?page=8

That project is dead before it started.

There aren't any high-powered CPUs (like the i7) that can do large number of FLOPS, why would you think you'd ever find a lower power *CPU* that can do that? Low powered CPUs have die size at a premium, spending that on FPUs is a waste. You'll have far better luck with something like ION, if it supports CUDA.