14 DAY TRIAL // Intel and NVIDIA seem to be trading barbs recently, with either always managing to somehow point out just what it is that their upcoming or current products can do better in certain areas. Intel, on the one hand, has been definitely delivering breakthroughs in the area of low-power consumption and long battery life. On the opposing side, NVIDIA is, of course, sticking to its graphics and multimedia expertise and has already announced that the next-generation ION chips will give netbooks multimedia capabilities.
The company is seemingly unconcerned with how Intel has been saying that the ION's extra features add unnecessary cost to devices that are not even designed for multimedia capabilities. Folks at Engadget seem to have gotten a hold of some details on the platform and it appears that NVIDIA may be working on other things besides feature integration.
The so-called ION 2 chip (whose real denomination is still unknown) might be arriving during the first quarter of 2010 and, as many end-users will likely be thrilled to learn, it will even be compatible with the Pine Trail platform as well. This will likely aid NVIDIA in scoring more design wins because the Pine Trail itself specializes in low power consumption. Still, what the company did not speak on was just how the chips would deal with the Intel platform's integrated GMA 3150 GPU.
NVIDIA again stressed its belief that end-users would definitely be interested in gaming and multimedia experiences even on netbooks. The company thinks that consumers will want more than just the low HD capabilities offered by third-party accelerator chips. The ION 2 may also give UMPCs satisfactory media streaming capabilities (such as online video viewing).
The GPU maker supposedly confirmed that the developers are working on improving the overall power efficiency, since this is the one area where the ION handily loses to Pine Trail. Still, this issue may be somehow made up by Pine Trail itself, in the case of netbooks built on a combination of both technologies.
The platform is currently set for demonstration at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show.