14 DAY TRIAL // With the launch of the world's first NVIDIA ION-based nettop, the much anticipated AspireRevo, the Santa Clara, California-based graphics chip maker is expecting that, by the end of the year, 40 new systems using the Ion platform will be available on the market. The company revealed this information during a press event in Taipei, where two more NVIDIA Ion systems were revealed, designed by motherboard maker ASRock and Taiwan-based Pegatron. These two join Acer's AspireRevo and are expected to become available to consumers later this year.
The two systems will likely be showcased during the Computex 2009 Show in Taipei and will provide a choice for either a dual-core Atom 330 or a single-core Atom 230 processor. The full technical sheet of the two is yet to be unveiled, but it appears that ASRock's system will pack an integrated optical drive, a feature that sets it apart from the AspireRevo, which requires an external optical drive.
ASRock's Ion-based nettop has suggestively been dubbed the Ion 330, as it will be featured with the NVIDIA GeForce chipset and the dual-core Intel Atom. At the other end there's Pegatron's system, which has been dubbed Cape 7. Unfortunately, for the time being there are no details on the processor model, storage and memory. But this will likely become an OEM/ODM design, enabling other companies to sell the product under their own brand.
One of the more interesting aspects of NVIDIA's press conference is that the chip maker says that it expects close to 40 new models of Ion-based computer systems to make their debut before the end of 2009, all of which are to be powered by Intel's Atom processors, which makes this a win-win situation for both NVIDIA and Intel.
