Nvidia has unveiled its Ion platform by pairing their GeForce 9400M chip with the Intel Atom processor on a pico-ITX motherboard. As reported earlier, Nvidia and Intel were planning to work together on Nvidia MCP79 (that's GeForce 9400M) chip support for the Intel Atom platform. The GeForce 9400M is the same chip used in the new MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. This design reduces the number of chips required from three to two by integrating the graphics component, the memory controller, and the interface on a single chip.

Nvidia's GeForce 9400M has the GeForce 9 Series GPU, which is DirectX 10 compatible and supports dual-channel DDR3 RAM, SATA, USB, Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express 2.0 x16 and x4 links. Nvidia claims 9400M is faster than Intel's 945G. The 9400M is touted to carry CPU offload work. Nvidia also flaunts that the 9400M chips can handle high-definition graphics via hardware acceleration.

In fact, Nvidia has even built a custom Ion platform computer to demonstrate the prowess of Ion. Anandtech got hold of one such piece and ran Windows Vista with a 2.5-inch HDD and played HD videos without any problems.

The platform is ideal for nettops or netbooks, which have smaller screens, have no capacity to run heavy applications due to low-performance CPUs, and are devoid of optical drives. Users thus can't enjoy high-definition videos or play high-end video games like they do on standard desktops.

Though Nvidia 9400M paired with the Intel Atom is capable of handling HD video and heavy graphics, there are certain drawbacks. The power consumption of Nvidia 9400M (18W) is two times higher than that of Intel's platform. Also, Intel's platform runs on an affordable DDR2 RAM while 9400M requires expensive DDR3 memory.

Intel's Atom platform enjoys a monopoly in the netbook-nettop market and it is bundled with supporting chipsets, leaving no room for third-party core logic. Currently, Apple and Toshiba are the companies using Nvidia 9400M. With advancements in the Ion platform, Nvidia is urging Intel to open up its Atom platform.

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