NVIDIA has officially lifted the thin veil of secrecy that hadn’t really been covering the details about the company’s next-generation ION platform. NVIDIA ION pairs a low power Intel Atom-powered notebook with NVIDIA graphics to deliver higher performance HD video playback, 3D graphics acceleration for games, and CUDA technology for GPU-accelerated video encoding, recording, and some other tasks.

There are a few things that make the next-generation ION platform different from the chipset found in older computers such as the HP Mini 311 and Asus Eee PC 1201N.

Here’s the bullet point version, but you can find more details below

• The platform comes on a PCI Express card
• ION systems will typically have 512MB of dedicated memory and HDMI output
• Supports netbooks with 10 and 12 inch screens
• The 10 inch model has 8 CPU cores, while the 12 inch version has 16
• The reason the 10 inch chip is less powerful is because there’s a tighter space with less thermal cooling in smaller netbooks
• Next-gen ION chips will support Optimus technology for automatic graphics switching, which means better battery life
• Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, and Zotac are among the launch partners with netbooks, all-in-one desktops, and nettops built around next-generation ION
• Next-generation ION systems should be priced about the same as first generation ION computers
• It’s not called ION 2

OK, now for some details. First, because Intel went and combined the CPU and GPU onto a single chip, NVIDIA couldn’t just take over the graphics and memory control functions anymore. Instead, the new ION processor is a separate video card, similar to a discrete graphics solution. The next-generation ION GPU will come on a PCI Express card that fits into mini-laptops with 10 or 12 inch screens. Yep, that’s one of the other differences, for the first time you’ll see 10 inch netbooks with ION graphics. This isn’t a huge surprise, since Acer already introduced the Aspire One 532g netbook with next-generation ION graphics.

Here’s what you might not have known, though. NVIDIA will offer two different versions of the new ION platform. The version that fits in 10 inch netbooks has 8 GPU cores, while the 12 inch model has 16. The result is that 10 inch netbooks with next-gen ION will perform about as well as laptops with first generation ION. Larger laptops, nettops, and all-in-one PCs with ION graphics will be much faster. NVIDIA says the 16 core version of ION scores about twice as high as first generation ION on benchmarks such as 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage.

Read the rest of this entry »