Techiton

It was just last week that Nvidia announced their Ion platform which will combine the power of Nvidia's graphics and Intel's Atom processor for making small power packed PCs. A news article reported by Digitimes says that Intel is knocking back their support by selling Atom processors only with their Intel chipsets and not in a separate single bundle.

Nvidia's push for the Ion platform, which combines its GeForce 9400 mGPU with the Intel Atom CPU, is heavily reliant on Intel being willing to abandon its current Atom pricing system. Under the existing scheme, Intel will only sell Atom CPUs and corresponding chipsets in a bundle, but if hardware vendors are unable to buy just the Atom CPU, the Ion platform becomes too expensive for most applications. Nvidia executives recently visited local PC makers, in an attempt to drum up support for allowing its MCP7A and MCP79 chipsets into the Atom ecosystem.

When asked to comment, Intel indicated that it has no plans to validate the Nvidia MCP79 chipset on Atom-based nettop or netbook platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU, the company added.