Nvidia signs up VIA for netbook push

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Feb 2009 at 09:46

Nvidia's president Jen-Hsun Huang has announced that the company's netbook platform, dubbed Ion, will support the VIA Nano by the end of the year.

The Ion is Nvidia's challenger to Intel's all-conquering Atom and offers full support for DirectX 10, PhysX, CUDA and even contains dedicated hardware for 1080p video playback.

VIA is also looking to make inroads into the netbook market and has already scored a significant win with its appearance in the Samsung NC20.

This is not the first time the two companies have flirted with each other. They were reportedly in talks late last year, with some observers suggesting Nvidia may move to buy the processor manufacturer.

However, the talks fell through in November and nothing's been heard until now.

Speaking on the announcement Nvidia says "The goal is to give the consumer choice to pair an Ion GPU with their preferred CPU. In this vein, Ion will support multiple CPUs including Intel Atom and VIA Nano."

It's no surprise Nvidia should be looking to get some distance from Intel. Nvidia is being sued by the chip giant over its use of Core i7 technology in chipsets.