Ion will grow with new Atom CPUs, promises Nvidia

 

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Posted on 1 Oct 2009 at 17:55

Nvidia’s Ion platform – which adds a discrete Nvidia GPU to Intel’s Atom CPU – is set to grow with new Atom processors, Ion product manager David Ragones has promised.

The platform has won praise in PC Pro for adding HD-capable graphics to lightweight devices such as the Samsung N510 netbook and the Acer Aspire Revo R3600.

But Intel itself is building improved graphics directly into its next generation of Atom CPUs for netbooks and lightweight PCs - codenamed Pineview - raising questions over Ion's future.

Ragones, speaking to PC Pro at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, dismissed the threat, predicting that Pineview would continue to use “the same old ‘n-minus-two, n-minus-three generation' graphics”.

“That’s very good for Intel in terms of managing costs,” he commented, “but it’s not good for consumers.”

He noted that while Pineview's integrated GPU might deliver high-definition video, its 3D performance would not approach that of a discrete chip, nor would it support GPU-accelerated tasks such as video transcoding.

No firm announcement

Ragones would not, however, discuss particulars of how Nvidia planned to upgrade Ion for Pineview.

“We have a very strong roadmap going forward,” he assured us, “and we will continue to raise the bar with what you can do with Ion platforms.”

“But we don’t want to pre-announce. We would rather talk about products that you can buy today.”

As if to illustrate that point, Ragones rounded off the conversation by showing a 1080p H.264 video running on an Ion-based HP Mini netbook.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith in San Jose