In what seems to be a breakthrough for netbook fans after NVIDIA announced their Ion platform which promises to greatly improve its performance whilst consuming a little bit more in battery energy, then comes Intel refusing to acknowledge it’s ever gonna happen. How?
Basically, Ion will use Intel’s Atom microprocessor but eschewing 945GSE and 945GC, the component that delivers display and basic 3D processing. Instead, NVIDIA offers their Geforce 9400 mGPU to enable netbook with better graphics processing and HD movie playback. Nvidia executives are already visiting local PC makers, in an attempt to drum up support for allowing its MCP7A and MCP79 chipsets into the Atom ecosystem.
The PC makers’ dilemna is actually in Intel’s policy in selling their Atom CPU. Intel will only sell their Atom CPUs in bundle with corresponding Intel made chipsets. If hardware vendors are unable to buy just the Atom CPU then the Ion platform becomes too expensive.
A comment released by Intel indicated that it has no plans to validate the Nvidia MCP79 chipset on Atom-based nettop or netbook platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU, the company added.
If NVIDIA fails to resolve this issue with Intel then they will have no other choice but to offer their Ion to Via’s Nano microprocessor.