Wednesday, December 24th 2008
Atom Not For NVIDIA: Intel
Barely a week into its announcement, the NVIDIA Ion platform, finds itself amidst a potential controversy that has trouble written all over it, reveals a DigiTimes report. The Ion platform is NVIDIA's attempt to bring to market, products incorporating the Intel Atom processor and its own core-logic with embedded GeForce graphics technologies. The controversy involves an internal statement distributed by Intel to hardware manufacturers that they will be able to purchase stocks of Atom processors bundled with homegrown i945GSE and i945GC chipsets, and not just the processor itself.
This leaves manufacturers with inability to buy just the processor. While manufacturers can work around this by buying the entire bundle per unit, in order to use the processor on products based on the Ion platform, it is an expensive way of doing it and substantially increases manufacturing costs. This would then render Ion based products too expensive to fit in the market segment originally conceived. NVIDIA's executives have been lobbying with Taiwanese PC makers to garner support for the Ion platform. Intel responded to the report, saying that it had no plans to validate NVIDIA MCP79 on netbook or nettop platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU, the company added. A response is awaited from NVIDIA.
Source:
DigiTimes
This leaves manufacturers with inability to buy just the processor. While manufacturers can work around this by buying the entire bundle per unit, in order to use the processor on products based on the Ion platform, it is an expensive way of doing it and substantially increases manufacturing costs. This would then render Ion based products too expensive to fit in the market segment originally conceived. NVIDIA's executives have been lobbying with Taiwanese PC makers to garner support for the Ion platform. Intel responded to the report, saying that it had no plans to validate NVIDIA MCP79 on netbook or nettop platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU, the company added. A response is awaited from NVIDIA.
20 Comments on Atom Not For NVIDIA: Intel
However this might be different in the lower power, mobile chipset field. Interested in seeing what Nvidia can bring to the field.
Some competition with the same CPU could go a long way to get intel off it's ass in terms of making Atom chipsets. The 945GM is alright, it gets the job done, but they're capable of MUCH more and better....
I just hope that the Nano shows it's head (maybe as part of trinity?) and that the Athlon 64 2000+ and 780G setup we were shown months ago makes its way into production.
What's that smell?
*sniff*
I think I know.
*sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffffff*
It smells like NVIDIA is cooking up a lawsuit directed at Intel.
As for comparing with dedicated graphics, the 9400 in the Ion chipset has the same specs as the dedicated 9400GT, with the exception of 100Mhz lower core clock(obvously for power and heat saving as they are used in laptops mostely). However, overclocking to the same speed would yield the same performance. So, yes, in this case onboard can compare with dedicated.My EeePC manages 720p without lag, but it needed 2GB of RAM to do it. 1080p is a no go though, I would love an HTPC with an Atom and a decent graphics solution that can play 1080p content.No opinion, the Ion platform really is better than the i945.See above.
Somehow, I don't get the feeling this move by Intel is 100% legal, if you catch my drift . . .
Slap the damn low power athlon in there, STFU and watch intel cry at their pathetic performance due to slow ass CPU and vid.
Problem solved.
IF I where nvidia tho, I would go NANO, the via nano is just THE BETTER CHIP, its flat out faster.......for higher end ion systems, I would go with AMD's new chip or even a low watt mobile k8 chip!!!
Are you talking about that Athlon thing they tried to claim would compete with Atom, which was just an underclocked single core Sempron running at 1GHz? The one, that despite using more than double the power a single core Atom does, only marginally manage to outperform it? And even then, even the reviewers that tested it said the performance over Atom was only due to AMD having a better IGP, which thanks to nVidia Atom now has also.
Oh, and of course there is the problem with physical size also, and the fact that the Athlon was still socketted, and still used normal DDR2, meaning something as small as what nVidia demoed would be impossible with AMD's solution.
Buy yeah, AMD's solution is SOOOOOOOO much better...:rolleyes:
Sorry, no power advantage. Socketed or not, I don't give a shit.
Cry about the ram, too, don't care. Integrate it on the MB for all I care.
It's still faster and isn't made by intel. +1 and +1
atom would be great in a smart phone or the like, but I wouldnt own one in a netbook or notebook, far to under powered AND lacking fetures I feel are MUSTS in this day and age such as Out-of-order execution, Atom is a step BACK in design for intel, its not a bad chip, but its far from a beast.
I still feel nVidia sould be better off backing/going with via as their cpu supplyer, the nano's design is just BETTER, IF intel didnt have such a strangle hold on the netbook/computer market(alwase have for OEM systems really) you would see more compitition, and maby some nano's that would run x64(last 2 netbooks i checked couldnt run x64 os's because they say the cpu dosnt support em64t/amd64 instruction mode)
intel took a step back to take a step forword with the pentium-m (c2d was the step forword) i dont see that happening with atom, I see intel cheaping out and trying to force the market to use their chipsets and chips and boards even, hope some of the companys put out some via nano based stuff soon, intel needs some good compitition!!!
The whole intent is small and power saving, two things the AMD solution doesn't provide. Making it useless for the applications Atom and Nano is used for.
We get that you are an AMD fanboy, but at least have more basis behind your argument than "It isn't Intel, so it is better".