NVIDIA’s Ion platform have gained many followers as the integrated chipset offers graphical performance way beyond Intel’s solutions for the Atom family. NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M GPU isn’t just found with notebooks, but also smaller systems like netbooks and nettops. It has supposedly been confirmed that NVIDIA will launch the second generation Ion platform before the end of the year and even though the shader count has doubled the climate will be even tougher for Ion 2.
Ion 2 supports Intel’s Atom processor, VIA Nano and other older processor models but the problem is that it does not support Intel’s next generation of processors based on the Arrandale core. Or for that matter Intel’s recently launched Lynnfield processors.
The reason is because of the DMI bus used by these processors. NVIDIA currently lacks a license for developing chipsets using this processor bus. Ion became a popular partner for Intel’s Atom processors but the next generation, Pineview, also use integrated DMI and to top it all off it sports an integrated graphics circuit. This kind of leaves NVIDIA and Ion 2 out in the cold.
We’re excited to learn how Ion 2 will manifest itself, but at the same time see what NVIDIA will come up with to befriend it with.
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