Soon
We learned that Optimus, Nvidia's new power saving technology is going to be
available also on its upcoming ION 2 GPU.
Since ION 2 is not chipset and it is simply
a GPU that interconnects with Intel’s Pine Trail platform, Nvidia can
take
advantage of Optimus technology even in this case. In some tasks, such
as word processing, Nvidia will let Intel’s IGP to do the work and if
the GPU power is
needed for gaming or video encoding, ION2 will jump in and do the job.
This is a good arrangement in Nvidia’s war
against Intel’s IGP, as the two companies can now work together against their mutual
enemy, AMD. We are still not sure when ION 2 is supposed to come to the market, but we would not
be surprised to see some units at Cebit, the biggest European tradeshow that starts on March 2nd.