NVIDIA's Next Generation ION Announced, Optimus + a 16-core Version
by Jarred Walton on March 2, 2010 12:01 AM ESTION: TNG Lives Long and Prospers
And that pretty much wraps up all we know about Next Generation ION. It will do everything that current ION platforms can do, only better. It will support Pine Trail, it will be 50-100% faster, and on netbooks Optimus will dynamically switch the GPU on/off as needed. Given the alternative between spending around $25 on a Broadcom HD chip compared to $50 to add an NVIDIA ION chip, NVIDIA obviously hopes netbook manufacturers will see enough added value to skip the Broadcom HD and go for NG-ION. If you're not happy with Pine Trail, we have to agree with NVIDIA on this one. Flash 10.1 support has been much better on NVIDIA GPUs than on the competition (though the 10.1 Beta 3 adds Crystal HD support), there are a few potentially useful CUDA apps, and light gaming support is an added bonus.
Casual games like Spore, Monkey Island, and World of WarCraft should all run reasonably well […and a little birdie told us StarCraft 2 runs acceptably as well!], but any game that stresses the CPU is going to cause problems. That's no surprise, since Pineview is virtually the same performance as Diamondville; it just uses less power. Hard drive performance has also been a sore spot on Atom, from a combination of the low-end CPU and RAM specs and the use of bottom-of-the-barrel hard drives. We'll have to wait for test hardware to see if things have improved much in respect to storage performance.
NVIDIA continues to promote CUDA applications like Badaboom and vReveal, along with multimedia support headlined by Flash 10.1. If you happen to be a YouTube junky, full screen Flash videos will no longer be a problem on an ION netbook. Besides Flash videos, NVIDIA has worked quite a bit with Boxee to provide a nice multimedia library setup that will run great on ION. NVIDIA also hinted that "something big" was in the works that would make it "foolish to not have a GPU" in your next netbook/laptop, but as usual they couldn't give us specifics right now. Marketing bluster or a real killer app? Hopefully we'll know by the end of the year.
We expect NG-ION netbooks and nettops to start showing up later this month, with prices similar to what we saw with the previous ION solutions. NVIDIA says we'll see 30 or more NG-ION designs by summer 2010. Two of the first netbooks with NG-ION scheduled for release are the Acer Aspire One 532G and the ASUS 1201PN. The 532G is also the first 10.1" ION, with a 1366x768 LCD to make HD videos (and general Windows use) more palatable. We really hope all ION-based netbooks follow suit and use a 1366x768 LCD as a minimum. The 1201PN is the next iteration of the 1201N, so we expect it to use an Atom D510 with ION—and hopefully eke out a bit more battery life, though the D510 will make that difficult as it lacks SpeedStep support. On the nettop side, we should see the Acer Aspire Revo, ASUS EeeBox, and Zotac ZBOX in the near future. There are also all-in-one designs coming with the ASUS EeeTop 2010PNT, Compaq CQ1, and Lenovo C200.
When looking at pricing, something else to keep in mind is Windows 7 Starter vs. Home Premium. We don't particularly care for Starter; it's not horrible, but the Aero UI and other personalization options (i.e. wallpaper) are definitely missed. ION netbooks should include Home Premium instead of Starter, so there's definitely added value in ION beyond the GPU. If you're looking at a $300 Pine Trail netbook with Win7 Starter versus a $400 NG-ION with Win7 Home Premium, we'd recommend the latter—especially if it comes with 2GB RAM instead of the meager 1GB found on most sub-$350 netbooks.
After the Optimus announcement, we could have pretty much guessed what Next Generation ION would entail, but that doesn't make the hardware any less impressive. ION has always been a far superior multimedia solution than regular Atom-based netbooks/nettops, and the new version keeps all of the good features, boosts performance, and adds seamless switching between IGP and GPU as needed. That means better battery life when running common applications, and improved features and performance when you need it. Atom-based systems are still going to feel slow for a lot of tasks, and while CULV laptops are competitive they're also a sizable jump in cost; until we can get CULV with Optimus graphics for under $500 there's a clear market for Next Generation ION.
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teohhanhui - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
So they have a good tech and they're saying desktop users can't get it? :(beginner99 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
yep strange. One would assume that if it's only in the drivers there is no additional cost to also make it available for desktops.Meaning this looks like this optimus thing must have some kind of downside (additional hardware, slower performance, worse image quality?). Nothing is for free...
Optimus would also be nice for desktops with the new i3/i5 dual-cores. You could have a decent gaming performance and low power usage if you are not gaming.
ChuckDriver - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Nvidia probably doesn't want to allocate resources to validate a feature on a platform where it would add little value. I think Optimus GPUs also have a region of silicon called the "Copy Engine" that copies the contents of the Nvidia framebuffer to the Intel framebuffer. Nvidia might not include that on the desktop GPUs or disable it in the BIOS if present. These are my opinions, I don't have any documentation to back them up.JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
To my knowledge, all 40nm G200/G300 parts have the Copy Engine... but it may not be on desktop chips. Anyway, NVIDIA's statements to me indicate that they just don't see it as critical on the desktop. If you can idle at around 20W, and you can use the GPU for other tasks, desktops may as well keep the GPU live at all times. (And if you're running a lower end GPU, idle power is probably under 10W.) Also, you would need to have all of the video output functions come off the IGP, and there are a lot of IGP motherboards where you are limited. How many would fully support HDMI with Optimus at 1080p? I don't know for sure.I still think they'll release Optimus for desktops at some point, but they don't want to spill the beans beforehand. It will probably be limited, i.e. something like "Core i3/i5 and later IGP required" to reduce the amount of validation. Honestly, though, until the notebook drivers are in lock step with the desktop drivers and all of the various bugs are worked out, Optimus can remain a mobile-only solution.
Penti - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Nothing is stopping anyone to use mobile parts on desktops though.PS. Sorry for accidentally hitting the report post link =P
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
NVIDIA informs us that there are currently no plans for Optimus on desktops or on other OSes.With nVidia so adamant about Optimus not coming to other OSs can we imply that Optimus won't be coming to the next MacBook Pro refresh as rumoured and that this new 40nm Ion won't serve as a replacement for the 9400M in Apple computers?
Any word on the TDP of this new Ion? I'm guessing it'll have to be quite a bit lower than other low-end discrete nVidia GPUs like the 305M/310M to make it worthwhile.
In terms of how the new Ion is achieving enough PCIe bandwidth, could nVidia be implementing their PCIe link such that they can gang the transmit and receive pairs? I'm assuming peak bandwidth is mainly needed for uplink back to the chipset, so ganging the differential pair together can double bandwidth to the required 500MB/s.
AmdInside - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Given that Apple has used their own Hybrid technology on their Macbooks so far, I am not the least bit surprised they were not interested in Optimus.I personally was at first turned off by Optimus because I thought the display engine had the same limitations of the Intel GPU (I want 1080p HDMI output from a netbook) but I see this is not the case. Thank goodness. I also see there will be a 10" ION 2 which is what I've longed for since the first ION was introduced. Finally a netbook that I can carry everywhere I go including the gym and use like a portable video player. It's March. Where can I buy the Acer Aspire One 532G?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
NVIDIA tells us mid to late March for these systems to show up at retail.yyrkoon - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
There is a lot to think about here. But when thinking about it, you're still forced to realize this this is still going to be in an atom platform. A platform that will no doubt be over priced( maybe even more than an entry level laptop ), use barely less power than an entry level laptop, and provide far less performance.I am seeing a pattern here, one that I have seen emerge in the past, when other companies ( some even far larger ) went belly up, or lost a huge portion of the PC/Portable computer market.
They have to have the know how, and they definitely have the backing. Is there something wrong with mixing this technology with an ARM processor, or just make a new class of a netbook that uses low powered ( other ) mobile processors. Be it in a netbook, or a nettop ? Oh right. The biggest gaming OS would be Windows . . . and they expect that of an atom CPU no less. . . Yeah right.
Yeah, I do not know. They are either mired in legality issues, or their creative side is no longer very creative. Who knows. Maybe some day they'll wise up and see the bigger picture.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
NVIDIA is still pushing the idea of moving more work to the GPU side of things and taking away from what the CPU needs to handle. This obviously works very well for certain tasks (e.g. video decoding, encoding, etc.) but doesn't help in other areas.But, remember when a 1.0GHz Pentium 3 was super fast? Atom is still a step up from there, so with the correct software solutions Atom + ION is viable for a lot of things. Running standard Windows games with no extra work done on optimization? Not so much.
As for Apple, even when they did switchable graphics you had to log off and log back in, and the "high-end" graphics in MacBook Pro is a rather anemic 9600M. Not that NVIDIA has had much better without moving to power hungry parts, but 32 SPs is nothing to write home about. I always thought it was odd that MBP had 9400M and 9600M... sure, it's twice as fast, but still a far cry from modern desktops.
Anyway, if NVIDIA ever does port Optimus to OS X (which despite their statements to the contrary seems like it will happen at some point), Linux would probably not be too far behind.