GeForce G310 Fermi - Nvidia news! 2010

Final Considerations

If the first generation of ION platforms was launched quietly and without any official announcement, waiting for the partners to make their products known during the months, nVIDIA has decided to completely change approach for the new ION generations. This new strategy is a witness on how ION has gotten some importance when it comes to nVIDIA’s solutions, thanks to the extraordinary success of netbooks in the past few months.

Looking in detail, however, we can’t claim that the new generation of ION solutions is a true new launch. As we mentioned, the GPU core is the same that can be found on the previous ION platforms. It’s just a restyling in order to adapt the previous solutions to the new Pinetrail platforms, with the important addition of the Optimus Technology, which was made possible thanks to the graphic controller present on the new Atom Pineview CPUs.

For a more detailed article about the nVIDIA Optimus technology, we redirect you to these series of articles:

nVIDIA Optimus Technology

The new ION features

After a brief explanation, we’ll see in detail what specifications come with the new generation of nVIDIA ION solutions. According to the information released by nVIDIA, there will be two ION versions: one for 12″ netbooks and another for 10″ netbooks. The first will feature 16 CUDA Core units, and the second will have half of it (6). From an architectural point of view, thus, it’s basically the same GPU that was previously integrated on the ION solutions, the GeForce 9400M. The GPU also supports DirectX 10.1.

The new generation of ION supports the Atom D410, N450 and D510 processors and DDR3 memories for the frame buffering operations. The usage of ION on a Pinetrail platform will also guarantee HDMI solutions, useful for netbook products that can be used as small multimedia systems.

The HDMI support isn’t the only featured added to the Pinetrail platform. The combination of ION and Pinetrail will give a possibility for HD support, Blu-Ray or streaming thanks to the Flash 10.1 acceleration, and some 3D games (that aren’t necessarily too demanding, of course). The ION systems will also have support to Windows 7 Home Premium, while the Pinetrail-only systems could only use the Starter Edition of the same OS.

On a more “legal” point of view, we only need to remember the battle between nVIDIA and Intel for the licenses to manufacture chipsets compatible with processors that have an integrated memroy controller. As Intel didn’t give the licenses to develop chipsets compatible with the new processors, nVIDIA decided to interrupt the development of new chipset solutions for new platforms, limiting themselves to support existing products and dedicate themselves entirely to the GPU business.

These are the reasons that pushed nVIDIA to continue on the ION development, simply proposing a GPU capable of working together with the new Atom Pinetrail platforms. The presence of an integrated graphic chip inside the Atom processor makes it a big strong point for the next generation of Ion GPUs, as it allows nVIDIA to use the Optimus technology.

Ion: No longer a simple chipset

The important difference between the previous ION generation and the current one is while ION previously represented the nVIDIA 9400M chipset - a solution that presented the 9400M graphic core, a memory controller and a I/O controller, the new ION generation is simply a GPU. Why this choice? There are two reasons, one technical, the other more on the “legal” side of things.

One of the peculiar features on the new Pineview Atom processors is the architecture, similar to what Intel has adopted on the Clarkdale and Arrandale processors: the integration of the GPU on the same CPU package. Atom Pineview will then have a series of features that were previously managed by the Intel 945GC chipset for the “standard” versions, or the nVIDIA 9400M for the versions featuring ION.

Introduction

At the beginning of January, Intel officially presented the new generation of Atom platforms and processors, known by the codenames Pinetrail and Pineview. Atom is an important product for Intel, as it has been the center of a series of products that became quite popular in the last period: the netbooks. Compact and small systems with enough power to perform simple tasks without the need of a true notebook.

During last year, a good challenge to Atom was launched by nVIDIA, called nVIDIA Ion. Ion is the commercial name of the integrated chipset called nVIDIA 9400M. The goal with Ion was to propose an alternative to what was considered the weak point on Atom platforms: The video subsystem.

Point of View is already a known partner of nVIDIA when it comes to graphic cards, and some time ago, the company has showed interest in the netbook market as well, presenting their Mobii netbook family, using the Atom + 945GSE solutions. But in the past few days, Point of View has presented a new solution, the Mobii Ion 230, and as the name says, it’s built using the Ion platform, nVIDIA’s alternative solution for the Intel Atom.

The new product, as much as it follows the same features as a normal netbook, also promises to be rather interesting thanks to the chipset potential. The hardware features include an Atom N230 processor, together with 1GB RAM and a 160GB Hard Disk. Completing the hardware specifications there’s the chipset with integrated GeForce 9400M graphics.

The future Nvidia Ion 2 platform for notebooks will feature more powerful graphics: the number of shaders on the new mGPU could in fact be more than doubled. The 40nm fabrication process has also been confirmed.

nVIDIA Ion, the netbook, nettop and all-in-one system platform recently released by nVIDIA was adopted by many manufacturers, that have the possibility of pairing low-consumption Intel Atom processsors with a good graphic chip, the nVIDIA GeForce 9400M, capable of offering superior performances when compared to the previous Intel solutions, and giving support for 1080p and Blu-Ray videos.

nVIDIA could be ready to launch the future Ion platform already during the fourth trimester of 2009. It doesn’t have an official name; for now, it’s known by Ion 2, and according to the first information known, Ion 2 will definitely have the 40nm process (instead of the 55nm of the current Ion), reducing consumption and the chip size.

Other rumors about the platform say that the integrated graphic chip should have more than the double number of shaders than its predecessor, greatly enhancing the performance. It’s still not known whether it will be an enhancement on the current chip or a completely new solution, however.