Intel denys nVIDIA's ion platform

[Cookie Monster]

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Intel insists Atom only for Intel chipsets, does not want to share Nvidia's Ion

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Monica Chen, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 24 December 2008]

Nvidia's recent move to try to extend Intel's Atom ecosystem to its recently announced Ion platform appears to have been knocked back by Intel, according to a response primarily directed at PC manufacturers as seen by Digitimes.

Nvidia's push for the Ion platform, which combines its GeForce 9400 mGPU with the Intel Atom CPU, is heavily reliant on Intel being willing to abandon its current Atom pricing system. Under the existing scheme, Intel will only sell Atom CPUs and corresponding chipsets in a bundle, but if hardware vendors are unable to buy just the Atom CPU, the Ion platform becomes too expensive for most applications. Nvidia executives recently visited local PC makers, in an attempt to drum up support for allowing its MCP7A and MCP79 chipsets into the Atom ecosystem.

However, in an internal statement distributed to hardware makers recently, Intel reiterated that Atom CPUs for netbooks and nettops are only available bundled with its 945GSE and 945GC chipsets, the makers said.

When asked to comment, 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.

Nvidia was invited to comment but did not respond by the time of publication.

Its kind of old news, but I would've bought a couple of nVIDIA netbooks instantly if they were available. I mean who wouldn't??

 

[INKster]

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Its kind of old news, but I would've bought a couple of nVIDIA netbooks instantly if they were available. I mean who wouldn't??

Intel: "You can. Get an Asus N10J."

 

[Davros]

good, nv dont think twice about denying stuff to other companies (eg: sli)
reap what you sow....

 

[INKster]

Actually, Intel has just denied that it had denied (sorry for the redundancy ) Nvidia the use of the standalone Atom processor:

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-new...tel Denies Squeezing nVidia Out From Atom.htm

 

[ninzel]

Just read a rumour that the new Intel Atom will be used in the next mac mini refresh aroundMarch with an Nvidia GPU. I guess I was wrong about Atom being just a mobile chip. For it to work in the work in the Mac mini it would have to be fully functioning CPU.

 

[Dave Glue]

...? What difference would the form factor be on it being declared a "fully functioning CPU"? Obviously since it can run Vista/XP then it's a complete CPU, Atom-based desktops from many PC vendors have been on the market for almost a year now.

 

[_xxx_]

Well I have a netbook with an Atom inside, and unless the chipset itself can magically run WinXP, I'd say it is a "complete" CPU.

 

[Simon F]

Just read a rumour that the new Intel Atom will be used in the next mac mini refresh aroundMarch with an Nvidia GPU. I guess I was wrong about Atom being just a mobile chip. For it to work in the work in the Mac mini it would have to be fully functioning CPU.

Do you mean, "Turing complete" ?

 

[rpg.314]

Do you mean, "Turing complete" ?

Ion preview.

 

[Thorburn]

To me Ion is a little pointless, it makes niche usage models possible such as blu-ray playback, but no Netbooks come with an optical drive, let alone a blu ray one and it doesn't have the CPU performance to be a part of my Media Center system.

The 9400 is clearly better than 945GC, but are its improvements are relevant to its market segment?

To put it crudly its like giving the Pope a penis enlargement, it might be impressive on paper, but it can't really make use of it.

 

[willardjuice]

To me Ion is a little pointless, it makes niche usage models possible such as blu-ray playback, but no Netbooks come with an optical drive, let alone a blu ray one and it doesn't have the CPU performance to be a part of my Media Center system.

The 9400 is clearly better than 945GC, but its improvements are relevant to its market segment.

To put it crudly its like giving the Pope a penis enlargement, it might be impressive on paper, but it can't really make use of it.

I would counter that one may need gpu assisted AVC decoding outside of Blu-ray. However I agree with your overall point, it seems pretty worthless to spend an extra $50-$100 just to be to able to decode the few high resolution AVC videos that one encounters on a netbook.

 

[BRiT]

The Ion with a Dual Core Atom makes for a great microITX HTPC / fileserver when paired with a case like this.

 

[Mortimer]

I wouldn't say it's pointless to have the ability to play at least some games while on the road. Civ IV, WoW and other lighter games would most likely work pretty ok while one can pretty much forget about them with 945GM.

 

[Simon F]

I would counter that one may need gpu assisted AVC decoding outside of Blu-ray. However I agree with your overall point, it seems pretty worthless to spend an extra $50-$100 just to be to able to decode the few high resolution AVC videos that one encounters on a netbook.

Why wouldn't you just get the Atom with its Poulsbo chipset which has hardware to do pretty much any format Video decode without breaking into a sweat? (IIRC there's a thread here somewhere discussing it)

 

[ninzel]

Do you mean, "Turing complete" ?

The article I read gave me the impression that it was a chipset for mobile devices like PDA's and cellphones. I guess I was mistaken.