With still no official word from Intel, we're left with a
new report saying that the company won't play nice with Nvidia and won't let it pair up Atom CPUs with the GeForce 9400 chipset. Known as the Ion platform, the Atom, GeForce 9400 pair is a low-cost, low-power solution that provides decent performance, DirectX 10 graphics and full HD capabilities. Or at least, that's what it is supposed to do as Intel is said to have made it very clear that it won't sell Atom processors without a 945 chipset, thus making it hard for manufacturers to adopt Ion and develop cost-effective nettops, netbooks with it.
Since Nvidia's whole idea relies on Intel giving in and selling Atom CPUs without a chipset, the Ion platform is looking like nothing more but a nice dream.