We've talked quite a lot about NVIDIA's ION platform over the past couple of months, right from the initial announcements back in December 2008 and through the myriad of netbooks and nettops using this solution, meant to boost up the computing capabilities of Intel's low-power Atom CPU. And now, it seems that NVIDIA's about to release its successor, solely known as ION 2 for the time being, which will provide quite a few enhancements over the first version and, most likely, arrive during this year's CeBIT show on Hannover, Germany.

Now, there's been some pretty serious speculation regarding ION 2 over the past couple of weeks. So, first of all, we've learned that NVIDIA has apparently postponed an official announcement at the request of hardware vendors, who haven't managed to take advantage of the maximum potential of the initial ION platform (in other words, they haven't sold enough ION machines yet, so it's not profitable for them to move to a whole new platform just yet).

However, it's also likely that we'll see at least a couple of ION 2 devices at CES, which will apparently support the new Pine Trail platform by Intel, although NVIDIA has refrained from making any comments to anyone regarding just how well the next-gen ION 2 will work when paired with the Intel GMA 3150 GPU, integrated right on the die of the new Atom N450 CPU.

And now... for the CeBIT part. Sources close to NVIDIA hinted that the ION 2 would arrive in Q1, 2010. And since we're most likely not going to see a CES launch, it may be that the official unveiling will be done at the next major tradeshow in the yearly calendar, held in Hannover (which we also sincerely hope to attend). On the other hand, NVIDIA's generally full of surprises, so who knows what we can expect.


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .