NVIDIA Could Enter the Netbook Market Today if They Wanted To

NVIDIA’s CFO Marv Burkett was recently quoted at a technology conference saying about Nettops: “We’re not saying we’re not interested; it’s a matter of how the market will evolve”. That got many people wondering what that really meant.

One complaint about Netbooks is that most can’t even play a fullscreen YouTube video at full speed, let alone 1080p video (on an external display) or video games. Clearly, NVIDIA could help there. The thing is, NVIDIA does not need to build a new product to enter that space. Look at the GeForce 9400M in the Macbook Air. Its thermal dissipation and power consumption *could* make it eligible for a Nettop. Heck, it might even be smaller than competing two-chips solutions.

Now, there’s the matter of pricing, but there are ways to find the correct combination of price & performance like “binning“, or work out a volume deal. If everything else fails, Moore’s law will cut the price by half soon enough.Technologically, there’s little that prevents someone from building a Nettop with a GeForce 9400M. 

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers, Featured, Top Stories
Tags: Thoughts