Drew Henry, general manager of MCP business at Nvidia, recently visited Taiwan to negotiate with Taiwan PC makers for their support in forcing Intel to allow Nvidia's MCP7A and MCP79 chipsets into the Atom platform ecosystem.
Henry pointed out that Atom processors have a high price/performance ratio, but said that, in his opinion, limiting them to 945GSE and 945GC chipsets will only limit future development. Therefore Nvidia hopes to work with PC makers to form a platform combining its MCP7A or MCP79 chipsets with Atom processors to significantly boost the graphics performance of netbooks and nettops.
However, the plan still has not yet been agreed by Intel, Henry noted. The company is currently trying to negotiate directly with PC makers and hopes to talk makers into demanding Intel sells them only CPUs, as opposed to the current situation when the CPUs and chipsets must be bought together, thus indirectly forcing Intel to give in to Nvidia's plan.
Henry pointed out that he can not predict Intel's decision, but said he believes the plans would ultimately benefit Intel in low-cost PC market.
Drew Henry, general manager of MCP business at Nvidia
Photo: Monica Chen, Digitimes, December 2008
Article translated by Joseph Tsai
