nVidia talks up Ion for netbooks

nVidia seems to be changing its focus. While they will never get away from making GPUs the company certainly has shifted its focus from the desktop to the portable PC world.

In a recent conversation with nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Laptop Magazine finds Huang talking up Ion.

The Ion platform throws the Intel Atom together with the GeForce 9400M GPU (oddly enough the same GPU that powers the new MacBook). Ion is intended to bring greater functionality to the netbook world.

According to Huang the current Netbook is nothing more than a PC that does not work that well. But with Ion the netbook can be a "Premium PC Experience" Huang also says that the current Atom with Intel chipset/GPU will be crushed by AMD's Neo.

Read more here.

Do you feel Ion would help netbook vendors scale Atom up to designs with 12-inch or larger displays?

Absolutely. The resolution of a computer depends on the capability of the GPU. It's completely independent of the ability of the CPU. The amount of data that comes from the Web, whether you have an iPhone or 16:9 high-res display, the GPUs will render and display the image so quickly that the resolution of the display won't matter. Ion will allow you to support resolutions as high as you want to go, from tiny displays to large ones.

How do you think Atom stacks up to AMD's new Neo processor and companion graphics chips?

Atom by itself with Intel integrated graphics would get crushed by the Neo platform. That's because AMD is one of the world's most advanced graphics companies. They bought ATI, who has wonderful technology. When you couple that with an AMD processor, it would destroy the Atom platform.

How about when you pair Atom with Ion?

That's totally different. Atom plus Ion will give Neo a good run for its money, and from my perspective, it's a superior platform. The Atom processor is really terrific-it's small and low powered. Atom plus Ion is just a fabulous machine: It's small, low powered, and full featured in every way.