anonymous (no@email.org) on 8/6/10 wrote:
>
>You are obviously correct when you speak about competing
>with Nehalem. But what about competing with Atom? If Nvidia
>will release a platform like Ion, but with a better
>processor, maybe, it could fit this niche?

Oh yes. I think something like a VIA core matched up with
Ion could easily compete in the netbook space.

It's a pretty thin space, though. Core i3 (and even more
so Sandy Bridge, I would expect) does quite well in low-end
laptops. And Intel is trying to push Atom down obviously,
at which point it may even be a reasonable alternative. So
Intel is weak only in the really low-end netbook area.

In the really-low-power area (ie pushing Atom down to the
cellphone kind of space) Intel may not be all that strong,
but I don't see nVidia being strong there either. Even
Tegra doesn't seem to be actually all that widely used, and
a new experimental x86 core would have to fight against not
just Atom, but all the good ARM cores in that space.

IOW, I do think that there is some room among Atom. But it
looks eerily similar to the space Transmeta was going for,
and Intel ended up fixing their weaknesses there once they
needed to. So I'd personally not be all that thrilled at
being in that competitive situation (again :)

Linus