It seems Intel is not going to let NVIDIA break into the Atom market without putting up some obstacles. Intel is not backing down from the fact that the Atom platform is a packaged deal, the CPU cannot be bought separately. This means that any company looking to use the Ion platform from NVIDIA will still have to get the 945GSE or 945GC chipset from Intel … and throw it away or perhaps use it as a coaster.
At the same time, Intel has no plans to validate the NVIDIA Ion platform for the Atom netbook/top platform, DigiTimes says. It doesn’t look like the Ion platform is going to get the breakthrough we were hoping for. Since the next generation of Atom will have much of the northbridge integrated into the CPU, NVIDIA will have even less to contribute then. We will just have to wait and see if the Ion platform will actually end up inside any commercially available products
Update:
“There is nothing preventing vendors from using the Ion platform. We sell Atom as a stand-alone processor, or as package with chipset.” – Intel.
