14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest news on the Web, Santa Clara-based graphics chips maker Nvidia will release the second iteration of its ION platform with two times more shaders than the number featured on the current version. As many of you might already know, ION 2 should land on the market sometime in the fourth quarter of the ongoing year.
There are no details on the exact branding of ION at the moment, yet it seems that industry sources have stated that the chip, although coming as a shrunken version of ION, will feature at least 32 shaders, which is double the number present on the current Geforce 9400M /MCP79 /ION chip, though some changes in the thermal features of the solution will also surface.
In case Nvidia indeed comes with 32 processors (as it calls the shaders) in ION, the performance levels of the chip will be greatly enhanced, offering it the possibility to gain more traction on the market compared to competitive solutions. According to Fudzilla, netbooks and nettops based on ION 2 will be able to provide both better gaming as well as better performance for CUDA applications.
The current version of the platform can offer acceptable 3D acceleration, while also keeping the power drain at the lower levels. The increased number of shaders in the next-generation Nvidia platform will boost the 3D performance levels a lot, something that Intel's integrated graphics circuits are not capable of delivering.
Even so, the upcoming chip will most certainly face a lot of difficulties when it comes to the price. Given the fact that the integrated solutions are usually much cheaper, ION 2 might not find itself useful at times when the extra level of performance it can deliver is not needed. For what it's worth, the chip will still come with support for a variety of CPUs including Atom, Celeron, Pentium and Core 2 series, as well as Via's Nano.