Netputing » Nvidia

Confirmed — Nvidia Working on Chrome OS Tegra Devices

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:12:37 +0000

Earlier this month, rumors out of China indicated that we’d see Google Chrome OS devices running on Nvidia’s Tegra platform. I had a product briefing with Mike Rayfield, Nvidia’s GM of Mobile Business, and heard it directly from the source. When chatting about supported platforms on the Tegra solution, the usual names appeared — Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Google Android. Oh, and Google Chrome OS too.

Nvidia is “working closely with Google,” on the Chrome OS platform Rayfield tells me. And that stressed to me that Tegra isn’t just a handheld device play. Of course, Rayfield reiterated that point when discussing where Nvidia sees Tegra in the future. It’s a two-pronged approach: Windows Mobile and Google Android support in the smartphone space; Windows CE and Google Chrome OS in the smartbook or netbook space. Linux variants could work as well, but that decision would likely be driven by OEMs desires.

I’ve used netbooks since they were born, so we also chatted about the products of today as compared to what’s coming down the pike. By and large, the netbook space is Intel’s playground right now, but Nvidia sees the devices as “dehydrated laptops.” Consumers still want support for x86 and Windows, but why? It’s all in the application support these days, but with the rise of the web as “the ultimate app store,” Nvidia is poised for the shift.

That led to some shared experiences with my 60-day web challenge from last year. In it, I lived in a web browser on a low-powered UMPC for nearly 99% of my computing time over two months. Indeed, it was a challenge, but the effort — and the proliferation of smartphones — are starting to indicate that people can happily compute in bite-sized chunks: a quick check mail here, a five minute YouTube video there, and so on. If that trend continues, will people need full desktop operating systems and bloated apps on a mobile device?

Nvidia’s Chief Executive Publicly Unveils Pricing of “Ion” Core-Logic – X-bit labs

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:32:50 +0000

Nvidia Corp.’s chief executive officer for the first time publicly unveiled pricing of the company’s GeForce 9400M single-chip core-logic better known as Ion. Based on the information provided by Jen-Hsun Huang now and several weeks ago, it transpires that Nvidia’s platform for Intel Atom processors is up to three times more expensive compared to Intel’s own platform.

“[The price of Nvidia Ion chip] is between $30 and $35. This is significant, but it is [needed] to have a good high definition video on the screen.” said Jen-Hsun Huang in an interview with La Tribune news-paper.

Earlier this year Jen-Hsun Huang said that Intel sold its Atom processors for $45 a unit, however, if a customer wanted to get Atom chip and compatible core-logic set, it would get if for $25, which automatically reduces Nvidia’s availability to compete against Intel in the Atom-compatible core-logic market. If the GeForce 9400M/Ion costs from $30 to $35, then the whole bundle consisting of Intel Atom and Nvidia Ion costs from $75 to $80, which is up to 3.2 times higher compared to the cost of Intel’s default Atom package. Still, Nvidia’s core-logic set is much more advanced than Intel’s.

ION 2 has 2X+ more shaders

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:48:32 +0000

ION 2 should launch toward the end of the year, but Nvidia doesn’t want to talk too much about it, as it still plans to sell many original ION chips.

Our industry sources have told us that the new, shrunk version of ION, probably branded as ION 2, should have much faster graphics and much more shaders. We don’t believe that the thermals will change that much, but we’ve heard that ION 2 will have more than double the number of shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 /ION chip.

Since ION has 16 shaders , or processors as Nvidia calls them these days, you should expect that the new one has more than 32. This will get much better gaming to netbooks and nettops based on ION 2 which is definitely something you cannot say no to and at the same time Cuda applications might run faster, in case you found one that matter to you.

ION 2 should be launching by the end of the year.

Source Fudzilla

DeviceVM Brings SplashTop to Acer Nettop, Sony VAIO NW Notebooks

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:17:59 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

If Vista’s lengthy boot times have got ya down, DeviceVM may have the cure for your load time blues. This morning, DeviceVM announced that it’s bringing its Splashtop “instant-on” solution (which lets users access media and the Web without booting into Windows), to two new platforms: the Acer Aspire Revo nettop and the Sony VAIO NW notebook line.

The partnership with Acer marks the beginning of a collaboration between the two companies that will see “RevoBoot” (the branded name for this implementation of Splashtop) paired with Nvidia’s Ion platform for enhanced multimedia capability. The Splashtop-powered version of nettop will be initially introduced in Europe, but there isn’t any word on a U.S. release.

Splashtop is also making its way into the Sony VAIO NW family of notebooks. The systems in the line will feature a dedicated Web button entitled “Quick Web Access” that will launch Splashtop with the push of a button.

Although the “instant-on” name doesn’t quite live up to the hype (it took us approximately 30 seconds between booting Splashtop and connecting to the Web in tests with other PCs), it can be a welcome relief from severely long loads.

Via