Could the trade off between power and battery life be about to be quashed once and for all?
After weeks, even months, of speculation Nvidia has officially unveiled its second generation Ion platform to the world and called it ‘Ion’. Yes, despite all talk of ‘Ion2′, Nvidia has opted for the Intel/Apple approach of retaining the same key branding, which makes a lot of sense and keeps things simple.
So what does Ion (2) bring? Funnily enough, Nvidia didn’t break down the complete specs, but what was revealed is crucial: for a start, netbooks equipped with it should still seen battery life last “up to 10 hours” on a single charge and yet have no problems playing back Full HD 1080p video. Graphical prowess is also good enough to enjoy light 3D gaming such as World of Warcraft, therefore shifting netbooks into a whole new segment.
Perhaps most important, however, is the new Ion will be combined with Nvidia’s potentially even more groundbreaking tech: Optimus. For those with short memories, Optimus combines Nvidia’s discrete graphics with Intel integrated graphics to smartly switch between the two depending on the application. For example, when using Word or surfing the Web, the low power Intel GPU will be used, but should you suddenly start streaming HD video, the Nvidia chip will kick-in before shutting itself off the moment the clip has finished. Clever stuff.
Nvidia will scale Optimus technology all the way through the smartbook, netbook and laptop sectors, and while Acer has already shown off the second-gen Ion-equipped Acer 532G (pictured) heavyweights Asus and Lenovo have now also signed on to build new netbooks around it.
How will all this bolster Nvidia’s commitment to the smartbook market with Tegra? We can’t wait to find out…
Gordon
