Nvidia Could Move Ahead With Ion 2 This Year
We want more Ions.
It's only now that Nvidia Ion-based netbooks are hitting the scene, which finally means that the Intel Atom chip is paired with some decent graphical muscle. Given the growing utility of the GPU for more than just 3D, the Ion is a blessing to the modest Atom.
With Intel's next generation Atom, codenamed Pineview, on the Pine Trail platform, having on-chip graphics, the Nvidia Ion might be in no-man's land. (The mainstream notebook parts built on the Westmere platform, codenamed Arrandale, will also have integrated graphics, but Nvidia doesn't have the license to design chipsets for Nehalem-based CPUs.)
Rather than just let the Ion die out, Nvidia is poised to release a follow-up as soon as later this year, according to various reports. While it's still unknown if the Ion will be paired with Pineview, the next-generation Ion will support a broader range of CPUs.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said earlier this year that the next iteration of the Nvidia Ion will support the VIA Nano, which is regarded as being much more powerful than the Atom. The next Ion is also believed to work with Intel's CULV offerings, meaning support for Celerons, Pentiums and Core 2 chips.
If Ion-based netbooks and nettops are a hit, hopefully we'll get to see the next-generation Ion expand to other CPUs before the end of 2009.

I am hoping to buy a VIA netbook in the future...
This is actually a great idea!
I wonder if Google Chrome could make an OS that just ran on the GPU...maybe more like a RISC based OS like the Mac used to be with OS 9 in the power PC days?
That would put some serious pressure on Microshaft and Intel!!!
I think if nvidia and via can pair together, the via cpu's will only get better.
Once they start getting some revenue they can afford to do things like a die shrink or new design.
This could open other avenues also, since both companies are paying intel royalties for the bus ... they could work together and move away from that situation.
Their CPU's are only good enough to run DX9 games.
Also the Via chips are not better than the Atom for office tasks, because they are (at the moment) single core/single thread cpu's.
They always will give a certain lag on the desktop experience compared to a multi core/thread CPU, even if they are faster on more advanced tasks like compression or other benchmarks.
That's probably the reason why the Atom is the only chip found to today that has survived the netbook war! Via has an x86 instruction set, and thus could run Windows, but I guess their performance/watt ratio might be low.
Hi def playback? On those tiny screens with no optical drive and 80gb of memory? Tv output should be okay but at the price of ion laptops a standalone blu ray player with media storage might be better ( perhaps even a ps3!). Of course the increased responsiveness is good but do 50 year old grandmothers need that? Do kids playing spore need that?(no hard feelings i play it myself)If i was after portable gaming (cod,old nfs) i could buy a bigger laptop for slightly more.
just my 2 cents.Im surprised nvidias not aiming this at larger laptops or desktops where lots of people try to get things done with integrated graphics.
After having a netbook, I don't *want* a notebook. Pure and simple. It's too big now! The portability of my netbook is insane! I can't even imagine how I lugged around my previous laptop.
But having a chipset that's decent enough to run some games on low is nice. And Intel... Well, it just doesn't do it. Ion gives it a chance.
That being said, if/when I replace my netbook, I'm going AMD.
You seem to be forgetting that Intel and AMD do hold a lot of the x86 patents, even trying to make something that would run x86 code would probably result in a lawsuit.
*VIA I believe could create their processors because they are also in a licensing agreement with Intel and AMD(?).
Actually, the tegra contains an arm cpu and a gpu on one chip. It is not x86 so it cannot run windows.
DX11? really come on...
its a freakin netbook, what would you possibley run with DX11?!
oh i know, Crysis 2