I heard they may use an enhanced version called Turbo Encabulator in next-generation CPUs.

More info here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXW0bx_Ooq4

M-x iso-accents-mode.

This is the easiest way I know to type accented characters on a US keyboard. The version of emacs that gets installed by default on recent Ubuntu versions does not have support for this, but I found that switching to a minor revision older (through synaptic) brings it back.