Nvidia Optimus Promises to Optimize Performance and Power Consumption

From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. plans to introduce a new technology for mobile computers that will finally marry high-performance graphics and low power consumption in Q1 2010, the company said in a statement. The technology is called Optimus and is claimed to be unique for Nvidia.

“Nvidia Optimus technology works on notebook platforms with Nvidia GPUs. […] It is seamless and transparent to the user. Its purpose is to optimize the mobile experience by letting the user get the performance of discrete graphics from a notebook while still delivering great battery life,” an explanation by Nvidia reads.

From Nvidia’s explanation it is unclear whether Optimus is a new technology to trim power consumption of graphics processing units (GPUs); a technology that seamlessly switches between low-power integrated graphics cores inside Intel Corp.’s latest central processing units and Nvidia’s discrete graphics processing units; or a new class of Nvidia graphics processors designed for mobile computers that can deliver very low power consumption when in battery mode by disabling power-consuming parts of the chip.

Meeting low power consumption and high performance graphics processing is very important for notebooks these days as consumers demand rich graphics experience, but still want long battery life, which often gets compromised by power-consuming GPUs.

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