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VIA's Trinity Netbook Chips Take On Intel, Nvidia .
VIATechnologies launched a processor platform for netbooks, taking on Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Nvidia in the growing mini-PC market. VIA's three-chip platform, called Trinity, comprises the company's Nano x86 processor; a media system processor, such as the VIA VX800 chipset; and a discrete PCI Express graphics processor from S3 Graphics. VIA said the combination translates into speedier netbooks than today's systems, which typically run the Intel platform.
VIA claims the onboard S3 Chrome graphics accelerator supports high-definition video and the latest DirectX 10.1 graphics technology in Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Vista. In addition, the technology supports an HDMI output for video and audio playback on a digital television or computer monitor. VIA did not disclose pricing, or say when the platform would ship in netbooks. Intel processors and graphics chipsets are used in the majority of mini-laptops shipping today. The so-called netbooks typically have displays of 10 inches or less and sell for as little as $300. The lack of performance, however, has been an issue with consumers. Industry observers say manufacturers have seen a high rate of returns among buyers, who are disappointed with the systems' inability to go much beyond basic Web browsing and e-mail.
Nevertheless, the market for the mini-PCs is growing. Manufacturers this year are expected to ship 14 million units, compared with fewer than 1 million last year, according to market researcher DisplaySearch, which predicts netbooks will settle in at about 16% of the laptop PC market by 2011.
The expected market growth is attracting platform vendors claiming to solve the performance problems. Nvidia has introduced its Ion platform, which combines its GeForce 9400M motherboard graphics chipset with Intel's Atom processor, which is quickly gaining traction in netbooks. Intel is likely to also introduce new products for boosting netbook performance.
While VIA's Nano has been seen in a few netbooks, the vendor has yet to establish itself as a player within the mini-laptop market or within the PC market in general.
Nvidia to Provide Notebook Driver Updates Itself
Nvidia said Thursday that it will begin providing driver update
s for its notebook graphics chips directly on its Web site, bypassing the need to visit the sites owned by the notebook vendors themselves. The first release will add Nvidia's CUDA functionality to notebooks equipped with GeForce 8 and 9-series GPUs or Quadro NVS-equipped notebooks, Nvidia said. Nvidia will add a WHQL-certified version supporting all GeForce 7, 8, and 9 series and Quadro NVS series notebook GPUs early next year. Nvidia's choice has become standard practice within the desktop PC community; users typically have the option of downloading a standard driver set from either Nvidia or sometimes the graphics-card or board maker itself. Notebook vendors typically use some form of proprietary software service to facilitate upgrades, however.
"Nvidia is committed to giving the rapidly growing number of customers using notebook GPUs the same performance optimizations and innovative graphics features that desktop customers have grown accustomed to," said Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at Nvidia, in a statement. "To accomplish this, we have worked diligently over the past year to modularize our driver architecture and develop a unified driver install package that will not only work with notebooks from all manufacturers but also maintain all of their specific model customizations such as hotkeys and suspend and resume functionality.
" In other Nvidia news, the company announced its Ion platform on Wednesday. Essentially, Ion is simply Nvidia's pitch to get its GeForce 9400 GPU, announced in conjunction with the latest MacBook notebooks, tied to Intel's Atom processor.
If anything, this is savvy PR on Nvidia's part: get the press talking about what essentially is a sales pitch. Intel can bundle a processor, chipset and wireless radio together and call it "Centrino"; what bundling options does Nvidia have? Discounts for desktop GPUs? I can't see the company having much leverage here, at least initially. In all fairness, however, any netbook can use improved graphics, especially to assist playback of Flash video and other multimedia functions.
nVidia Looks to Combine Graphics, Intel`s Atom Processor for Mini-Notebooks.
Nvidia is looking to combine its graphics technology and Intel Atom processor into a new type of platform for mini-notebooks and so-called “netbooks.” Nvidia plans to roll out its new “Ion” chip set platform in 2009, which will combine an Nvidia GeForce 9400 GPU along with the Intel Atom processors for mini-notebooks and other types of netbooks. The Nvidia chip set news comes as AMD is also looking to enter the mini-notebook and ultraportable laptop market with its “Yukon” platform in early 2009. Nvidia is looking to bring its graphics technology into the mini-notebook and “netbook” market with a new chip set platform that combines its own graphics processor with Intel’s Atom chip. Nvidia announced its “Ion” platform for mini-notebooks and netbooks. This chip set platform combines Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 GPU (graphics processing unit) along with Intel’s Atom processor The Nvidia GeForce 9400 series GPU is the same graphics processor family that Apple selected for its new line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros that premiered in October. While Nvidia is looking to partner with Intel to create new features and capabilities in netbooks and mini-notebooks, the company is looking to wedge itself into a market that Intel has dominated since the debut of the Atom earlier this year. If PC vendors use the Ion platform with new mini-notebooks, the Nvidia chip set would displace the integrated graphics that Intel ships with its own 945GSE Express chip set for netbooks and other mini-notebooks.
Nvidia has already signaled that it challenge Intel when it comes to mobile Internet devices or MIDs. In June, Nvidia launched a system-on-a-chip design called “Tegra” that uses the company’s graphics and an ARM 11 processor for MIDs. While the GeForce 9400 GPU offers 16 parallel processing cores, the entire Ion platform will use 18 watts of power. The platform also supports features such as HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) and dual-link DVI (digital video interface).
For users, the presence of Nvidia graphics technology with mini-notebooks and netbooks could mean that they will not have to sacrifice performance for the low-price and portability that is quickly becoming a hallmark of these types of laptops. In a statement, Nvidia said its Ion platform would support 1080p high-definition video and support the user interface for both Microsoft Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 operating system.
Right now, most netbooks and min-notebooks run either Windows XP or some form of Linux and can not handle high-definition video. “It’s something that I think PC makers will embrace in that it could help them to deliver lower-priced notebooks that are still very much livable for customers in that they delivers reasonable performance in areas such as showing a videos or even rendering Flash on a Web pages.
“So the bottom line is that, by selecting this chipset, customers won’t be required to sacrifice performance when they choose a less-expensive laptop,” Spooner added. “In this economy that is a very important thing.”While still considered a small part of the overall PC market, more and more IT companies are looking to offer their version of netbooks, mini-notebooks and ultraportable laptops. In early 2009, Advanced Micro Devices is expected to launch a new platform called “Yukon,” which will use AMD CPUs and ATI graphics for a new line of affordable ultraportable notebooks that have screen sizes of 10 inches or larger. Other chip vendors, such as Qualcomm, Via and Texas Instruments are also jumping into the netbooks and mini-notebook markets with their own platforms The netbooks market alone will see unit shipments between 30 million and 40 million in 2009, which could make it a $1 billion market by the end of the year. Mosesmann also estimated that the average selling price of the Nvidia Ion platform will be between $30 and $50.
The average netbook or mini-notebook sells for about $350 for now, although companies such as Dell are offering more sophisticated configurations for a high price. For example, the Dell Mini Inspiron 12, which uses the Intel Atom, sells for about $600. The Nvidia Ion platform is expected to add about $50 to the price of the average netbook or mini-notebook.
Nvidia did not officially announced when the Ion platform would be available, although Mosemann’s research note indicated a launch by the first half of 2009. While the primary market for Nvidia’s Ion chip set is the laptop, the company also believes the platform will work in nettops and all-in-one PCs.
why to choose nVidia.
At our demo, Ragones was quick to chime in: "That's just Intel positioning around the limitations of their hardware." He also says that computers using Ion can run not only ten times as fast as current netbooks but also five times faster than straight Centrino-platform laptops using Intel integrated graphics. According to nVidia, the thermals of an Ion-platform machine will be lower than those of a current Atom system, and the idle power will be comparable, while maintaining roughly the same battery life.
That means that machines using Ion could run Vista--and, nVidia says, Windows 7. (No doubt, Microsoft is more than happy to dump XP and push Vista and Windows 7 these days.) Such systems will be able to process and output 1080p video sans stuttering, too. Of course, that says nothing of the potential for incredibly tiny desktops that still pack a punch. Staple on a couple hard drives and turn this unit, and the makers could sell it tomorrow. Heck, incorporate the guts into a TV, and you have a turbocharged media center without the extra box in the living room. For some perspective, the Mac Mini measures 6.5 by 6.5 by 2 inches, but nVidia's l'il system occupies only about half as much space. And the black box that nVidia showed was as big as it was only due to the daughter board that handles additional connections (such as 7.1 audio).
Does this mean that nVidia is shutting out Via's mobile CPUs? "We continue to work with Via to promote small-form-factor platforms based on discrete GeForce GPUs and Via Nano CPUs," Ragones says. "Via Nano platforms fully support full PCI Express x16 expansion for GeForce graphics."
All right, here are the big questions: How long before we can lay hands on computers using this configuration? As soon as next June, according to Ragones. And how much could it add to the price of current netbooks? Not much. "At most," he says, "it would tack a $50 premium onto the price." But that $50 could make a world of difference between what a netbook can do now and what it will do in a couple months.
nVidia Ion Turbocharges Intel Atom1. A charged atom
2. nVidia's new two-chip product that works with the Intel Atom netbook CPU for affordable, portable performance. I'm going to give you the same advice I'm currently giving to all my buddies: Unless you absolutely need a sub-$500 portable right now.
3. Imagine a netbook that can actually play modern first-person shooter games. Or a tiny $500 PC that can quickly encode video. It's possible--I just saw it with my own two eyes. nVidia recently came in to show off its two-chip Ion platform, which marries an Intel Atom CPU with nVidia's 94000M graphics processing unit. Honestly, the results surprised me.
4. Let me back up for a second. I've been complaining that, as neat as netbooks may be, I'm not buying one until their makers replace their lame integrated graphics. I want to play games that are a little more sophisticated than Peggle, and to watch good-quality video on the machine's 10.2-inch screen. And that's exactly what's happening here
5. nVidia product line manager David Ragones didn't didn't have an actual netbook on hand (he said that we were getting the same demo that manufacters have started seeing in the past couple weeks), but the proof of concept was right there, in his hand. On a tiny Pico ITX motherboard sits a single Atom CPU, nVidia's GeForce 9400M GPU, an HDMI-out, dual-link DVI, a SATA connection, a USB 2.0 port, and an ethernet port. That array of components dwarfs what you see on current netbooks, where you're lucky to get VGA-out and more than two USB ports.
6.As for the performance, while we didn't have the opportunity to throw our own tests at the platform, we did try a few quick side-by-side demos. In one corner was Acer's Aspire One. The first test was last year's hit game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. On the Aspire One, the game bombed out before even loading. Blame Intel's GMA945 graphics.7.On the test system, I started blasting my way through the first mission at 1024-by-768-pixel resolution with respectable speeds (a solid 25 to 30 frames per second). While the textures were a little flat--hey, I'm not expecting GTX280 performance here--the results were impressive. Not to mention that they're a huge step up from what we see on current netbooks, which can't even get out of neutral.
8. Another test that nVidia loves showing off is video encoding. On the nVidia wondermachine, we saw a video, The Plush Life, get encoded for an iPhone through a program called Badaboom. The app whipped through and encoded the 720p, 30-fps video at a rate of roughly 1 fps. (That's very good.) It speeds through tests thanks to CUDA-based software--that is, Badaboom is one of the few mainstream commercial applications that use the GPU for something other than just playing games.
9. Meanwhile, the Aspire One chugged along, encoding video with iTunes--software that runs off the CPU. Its total run time was about 20 minutes. Now, I admit that this was a slightly flawed comparison. I'd rather see Badaboom running on both machines, but that's a CUDA-only application.
10. The truth is, I've never had a problem with the Atom processor; it enables good performance at a bargain-basement price. The rest of the chip set is what has been holding netbooks back. But here's where tech journalists (and I'm including myself) need to own up to something: We've gone too easy on netbooks. I always figured, "Eh, it's a slick-looking mini-notebook that costs under $500. If it's meant only for Windows XP and basic computing needs, so be it."
