Nvidia said it will produce a G80 based mobile GPU that will eventually be integrated into the upcoming Santa Rosa line from INTEL. The manufacturer claims that several mobile GPUs have already been "sampled" and then sent to the testing facilities. The main idea behind this new product is to have it running by the time INTEL will launch the Santa Rosa line.

Santa Rosa will probably show up at the same time with the official launch of Windows Vista (January the 30th). And that's not a coincidence but more something like a link that INTEL wants to create between its line and Vista. And judging by the fact that Santa Rosa is Vista but also DirectX 10 compatible through its new integrated GPU, that's not a bad idea. What remains to be seen is how good this integration will actually work.

As for Nvidia, it's quite clear that they want to offer a DirectX 10 alternative to the IGP solution. And since AMD is not far behind when it comes to IGPs for INTEL, in both mobile and desktop forms, they'd better hurry.

Performance wise, we already know how the G80 series does what it does. The actual problem, however, does not reside in the performance side but more in the way a G80 GPU can be integrated into a notebook. A 681 million transistor count can be translated in 2 things: space and heat. Not exactly the happiest words when it comes to mobile computing, huh?

It's quite unclear at the moment if the G80 GPU will be released in its original form or if it will be a cut-down version that will enter the mobile market. There is also no information referring to the way memory chips will be connected to the GPU. As a reminder, 384-bit memory requires significantly more space on the video card PCB. Due to all the problems such an operation produces, Nvidia may as well create a whole new product rather than a G80 based one.