ION 2 Ships in 2009 with Support for VIA's Nano Processors

Since earlier this year, there have been reports according to which NVIDIA is planning on releasing the second generation of its ION platform, which is essentially a chipset that allows PC manufacturers to develop low-power and compact computer systems that deliver the necessary performance to run some of today's most widespread applications. Although NVIDIA has been rather tight-lipped about the upcoming product, a couple of reports on the Internet have shown that the new chipset will provide double the number of Shaders available in this generation, while also adopting the newer 40nm manufacturing process. On that note, a recent report claims that ION 2 will ship later this year, but products could be available early next year.

According to a recent news-article on Fudzilla, the upcoming chipset has been scheduled for shipping for later in 2009, something that the article claims to have been confirmed by “NVIDIA's chipset boss.” Unfortunately, some of the more juicy details, regarding the clock frequencies and other technical details related to the new chipset's performance, haven't been confirmed yet. NVIDIA will let its customers choose what designs to adopt for the new platform.

Confirming some previous rumors, the aforementioned article claims that the new chipset will come with support for an array of processors, including different Pentium processors, but also VIA's Nano chips. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that we are going to see new ION 2-based systems that run on VIA's low-power processors, rather than Intel's own Atom or Pentium chips. It does, however, provide customers with a wider choice when designing their new systems.

The ION 2 chipset is a product of significant importance for NVIDIA, especially since Intel has determined the graphics chip maker to "postpone further chipset investments for Intel's DMI CPUs." The graphics chip maker has to focus on supporting other products with its MCP business and ION 2 is just an example, as it targets the mainstream market and enables some interesting designs.