Big blow to ION, Intel certifies HD Broadcom chip for Pine Trail platform

Intel’s Pine Trail platform only has two chips compared to the three found in current Atom-based netbooks. The move means that the platform should be cheaper, have better performance and lead to great battery lives. However, by moving the GPU and memory controller onto the Pineview processor means that the graphics side may suffer.

Intel has realised this and has therefore certified a HD decoding chip from third-party Broadcom. This is likely to be a big blow to Nvidia, whose ION platform is compatible with Pineview. Intel will offer the Broadcom BCM70015 GPU as an option to its partners when the Pine Trail platform launches in Q4 2010. Read more