Nvidia scores first major customer for Ion graphics platform

By Dean Takahashi May 25th, 2009

When Nvidia launched its Ion graphics platform for netbooks and small laptops in December, it landed with a thud. But today, the company is announcing that Lenovo is going to use the platform to create a small laptop with 10 times more graphics horsepower than typical laptops. Ion is a chip that combines an Nvidia graphics chip with a chip set. It’s meant to be paired with low-cost processors such as Intel’s Atom microprocessor in low-power computers such as netbooks, which surf the web and are smaller than laptops. Although the graphics chip is an older model, it is more powerful than typical Intel integrated chip set graphics. Until now, Intel had locked up the Atom market with its own chip sets. Nvidia executives suspected foul play. They’d heard that Intel wasn’t playing fair, pricing its bundle of Atom with an Intel-branded chip set with Intel integrated graphics at a lower price than for a stand-alone Atom. Nvidia hasn’t sued for antitrust, but it has complained loudly about it. Intel denied the allegations.

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