Nvidia Ion: Bringing Real HD Performance to Netbooks and More

Intel’s Atom processor has been a cornerstone to building the netbook market. It can handle day to day computing tasks on such a small amount of power that it makes the combination of small form factor and good battery life possible. The problem is that the Atom is mated to a dinosaur of a chipset, the 945G.

It doesn’t use a lot of power (by full sized laptop standards any way), and it’s cheap, which are essential to netbook computing, but the compromises involved are very costly. Specifically, the graphics on the thing are horrid. Since you can’t really add discrete graphics to a netbook without making it bigger and more expensive, and thusly not a netbook, the whole market has been stuck with what Intel deems sufficient.

First on desktops then laptops, Nvidia has realized that the Intel platforms were crippled by their terrible integrated graphics. To the benefit of users and both companies, Nvidia supplied chipsets with usable integrated graphics. Granted, this cost Intel some sales of their lousy chipsets, but it did keep their CPUs in demand with many that would have otherwise turned to AMD.

Nvidia doesn’t bite off its nose to spite its face, and just because Intel is trying to shut them out of the integrated graphics and chipset markets simultaneously (discussed below), doesn’t mean the Green Team can’t make hay while the sun shines. Their new Ion platform pairs the Atom CPU with a chipset on a motherboard, heck, let’s call it a “mothercard,” that fits in the palm of your hand. And it opens up a market of not only more powerful netbooks, but also all kinds of home and portable computing ideas.

The tiny packaging involves a very clever piece of design on Nvidia’s part. The Ion chipset combines the northbridge, southbridge, and 9400 integrated graphics, into a single chip. The chip isn’t small: it’s actually quite a bit bigger than the Atom CPU, though some of that is attributable to manufacturing processes (65nm instead of 45nm).

Still, it is an impressive improvement in terms of size compared to three separate chips. Perhaps more impressive is the difference in performance. The Ion can play true HD Video and 7.1 surround audio without breaking a sweat. That is a whole new level of performance for netbooks, and opens the door to myriad portable and home computing devices. The increased performance comes at a price, however. Battery life on the Ion will be somewhat lower than the 945G, but likely by a reasonable margin.

When it comes to cutting edge games, even laptops have trouble. Expecting a netbook to play Crysis just isn’t reasonable. However, dedicated portable gaming (DS, PSP) has been a huge market for decades, and not making the netbook connection would be a big miss.

Game developer and MMO Channel Editor, Michael Hartman, points out that developers of games which are less taxing on hardware, such as browser-based games, are ideally positioned to move into the netbook market with games that can run on limited resources.

While the Ion does offer a bit more support for gaming eye-candy, it won’t be running anything demanding at 60 FPS. What is interesting is that by turning off one of the Atom’s cores, Ryan Shrout at PC Perspective found that Left 4 Dead, which is a very AI intensive game, was actually more limited by the Atom CPU than the Nvidia 9400 graphics.

Next Page: Ion for All Kinds of New Devices, Vista on Ion, and Ion 2 with Via Nano