14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past months, there have been a series of rumors surrounding a possible VIA takeover by the Santa Clara, California-based graphics chip maker NVIDIA. The alliance between the two companies is said to be directly aimed at Intel, which currently dominates the market for x86 processors and will soon enter the discrete graphics market, with its much anticipated Larrabee chip. Concerning the rumored takeover of VIA by NVIDIA, the graphics chip maker's CEO, Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang, recently denied the allegations, putting an end to previous speculations.
According to a recent news-article on Digitimes, the relationship between the two chip makers extends to a collaboration that is aimed at delivering the next generation of NVIDIA's Ion platform, which will deliver support for VIA's own x86 processors, in addition to Intel's Atom and a few other CPUs. Mr. Huang said that his company had no plans to invest in VIA, a leading maker of low-power x86 processing solutions. Consequently, his statements put an end to previous rumors regarding a possible financial deal between the two.
In addition to clearing up the rumors related to the relationship between VIA and NVIDIA, Mr. Huang also noted that there were several PC vendors that were currently testing products designed on the company's highly mediated Ion platform, using Intel's Atom CPUs. According to NVIDIA's CEO, the company has big plans for its Ion platform, which is expected to become one of its major growing product lines. Unfortunately, Mr. Huang hasn't revealed any specific names, from which we should expect a competitor for Acer's recently introduced AspireRevo, designed on the Ion platform.
NVIDIA's next-generation Ion platform is expected to enable system vendors to build low-power and small-sized computer systems that combine NVIDIA's integrated GPU solution with a processor for either Intel or VIA. Currently, the Ion is designed to combine the GeForce 9400M motherboard GPU with Intel's highly successful Atom processor.