[mythtv-users] NVidia ION - Atom plus 9400M graphics on a box smaller than a toaster

Peter Loron peterl at standingwave.org
Tue Jan 13 19:34:14 UTC 2009


I wonder how much it would cost to license the reference design/ 
drivers/BIOS from Nvidia? Assuming nobody starts making something akin  
to the little black box (or just the base mobo+cpu), It might be  
interesting to look into getting a run of them made up.

-Pete

On Jan 13, 2009, at 7:11 AM, Robert Kulagowski wrote:

> I attended CES and saw the ION.  There were three on display, running
> Vista, and showing a number of demos.  One was a slide show, one was a
> helicopter shot of the Vegas strip video loop and one was a video of  
> the
> MythBusters demonstrating a paintball gun drawing a smiley face and  
> then
> a parallel version of the paintball robot that shot something like 300
> paintballs at the same time.  None of the videos exhibited glitches  
> that
> I could see, and part of the slideshow was an image of the CPU
> utilization while rendering the video demo.  Pretty negligible.
>
> The box really is small.  Just looking at the stuff on my desk, I  
> would
> say that it's about the size of the 5-port Linksys SD205 that's  
> sitting
> next to me.
>
> The three that were on display were behind plexiglass, so you couldn't
> actually touch them.  They were running though, because one had  
> crashed,
> and someone with small hands from NVidia had to reach in and reset it.
> When it was booting it showed that it was something like MC79 Pico VGA
> BIOS.  It went quick, so I didn't see much more than that.
>
> Externally it had 2xeSATA, VGA, DVI, 6x3.5mm audio, and I believe  
> there
> were 2 USB and a CAT5 connector.
>
> There is a fan on the Atom processor - it looks like a 40mm, but I put
> my ear up to the plexiglass case near one of the "hand-holes" and  
> didn't
> hear a jet engine.
>
> I could see NVidia getting around the restriction of having to use the
> Northbridge by putting the 9400 on a mini PCIe daughterboard.  The DVI
> connector was at a different elevation than the VGA, and the cardboard
> cutout mockups of the motherboard they were handing out sort of  
> implied
> that was a possibility.
>
> NVidia said that they believe that vendors will have the units  
> available
> in the summer.
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