NVIDIA, one of the world's leading vendors of high-performance graphics processing units, has recently hinted at a new technology, which the company plans to introduce sometime in the first quarter of this year. Aimed specifically at the notebook end-user, the technology is said to be capable of providing the performance of discrete graphics, without the user having to worry about the battery life of his portable computer system. At this time, the said product appears to be close to its official debut, but NVIDIA still kept much of the technical details under wraps.

According to a blog post on the chip maker's website, the NVIDIA Optimus technology will be announced as a solution for notebook users looking to boost their system's graphics performance. The purpose of the technology is to enable users to optimize their mobile experience by taking advantage of the graphics performance of a discrete graphics card, while not sacrificing battery life. There's no mention if the said solution has anything to do with the company's Hybrid SLI technology, but it appears that Optimus will be available only for notebook platforms that are featured with NVIDIA GPUs.

What this basically means is that users of laptops featuring the chip maker's most recent integrated GPU, the GeForce 9400 will be able to improve their system's graphics performance. The said GPU is also at heart of the outfit's famous ION platform, which is designed to support Intel's former generation of Atom processors. However, the 9400 GPU is also responsible for graphics of Apple's MacBooks, Mac Minis and 21.5-inch iMac.

More details on this interesting technology are to be unveiled sometime in February, with the company claiming that it plans to ship Optimus in the first quarter. There's a good chance that we will see the technology in action at the CeBIT 2010 show, in Hannover, Germany.