Official: Nvidia to move into netbook space

NVIDIA HAS FINALLY confirmed rumours it's eyeing up the netbook space, even giving the INQ a sneak peak at what consumers can expect to see in the next year or so.

Seeing an opportunity to bring an enhanced experience to the netbook market, Nvidia is taking the plunge. We recently caught up with Rene Haas, Nvidia's Veep of World Wide Sales, and got the scoop on Nvidia's upcoming netbook adventure.

Everyone knows that today's netbook market is dominated by Intel's Atom processor, a processor which has enjoyed near universal praise. However, the associated chipsets attached to the Atom platform are quite another matter, and it's here Haas sees Nvidia's chance to change the game.

The way Haas sees it, whereas today's netbooks have no GPU, no hard drive, analog rather than digital display and struggle with premium OSs, it doesn't have to stay that way.

"It's really about developing a platform which attaches to the Atom" said Haas, explaining Nvidia's plan to replace legacy 3 chip design with a two chip marriage between the Geforce 9400M and Atom.

The Geforce 9400M, announced back in October, is the chip currently being bunged into Apple's MacBooks, and the Green goblin thinks it's now high time it was unleashed onto the rest of the world. Like it or not.

"When you take that chip and combine it with Atom, you actually have a pretty interesting platform. You have, essentially, a very full function PC", noted Haas.

Haas doesn't deny for a second that the Atom is "actually a very good processor", but is also of the opinion that combining it with an Intel chipset somewhat "constrains the experience".

Haas even told the INQ that when combined with the Atom, the Geforce 9400M should make things like HD video, full streaming of videos or even tinkering about on photoshop a possibility, even on a netbook.

He also said that although no OEMs have officially announced anything yet, "everyone is interested". The tough economic climate apparently makes this an even more ideal time for Nvidia to dive into the netbook space, with Haas explaining that people are leaning more and more towards lower cost units.

"The lightness, the form factor, that's all kind of cool, but people are looking to see what they can do to enhance the user experience", said Haas.

And what of lower margins and little lappies cannibalizing the profits of pricier notebooks? Haas isn't too concerned. "The nature of the business is that prices always go down and functionality always goes up", he noted, adding "we think it's a good opportunity, we're not scared off by ‘it's a low margin business'. I think it's a great business to be in actually."

So, does Tegra have a role to play in Nvidia's netbook vision? Apparently not for the time being. "Tegra goes into a different space" Haas told us, explaining the Atom Geforce combination was more about taking an existing netbook platform which wasn't really a full PC and delivering a full PC. "Tegra is more about a mobile Internet device running a very light OS", determined Haas.

Netbooks are no game to Nvidia, literally. Haas agreed punters would certainly not be buying souped up netbooks just to play Crysis or Assassins Creed on a tiny 10 inch screen. Instead, the ideal customer would be one who "wants to download HD video from Itunes, somebody who may be streaming video, someone who may be a light Photoshop user, someone who may be doing transcoded videos".

Showing us the Pico TX box prototype, or the 'Ion platform' as Nvidia has decided to call it, Haas was confident OEMs would be climbing over themselves to make their own versions in no time. "Atom and 9400M is a nice optimized PC story, you're not overspending on your processor, and the Atom is a fine processor, but you can juice up today's $299-$399 Eee PCs and Acer Aspires" he concluded. µ