Apple interested in the nVidia Ion?

The hardware platform that could be the base for the development of the new Mac Mini seems to be nvidia’s Ion, the solution that the Californian manufacturer has proposed with the implementation of Atom processors.

According to a series of rumors that go around on the net, the next Mac Mini systems will feature an Nvidia 9400M integrated chipset (the same that is already featured in all Apple’s portable systems) and an Intel Atom 330 processor, a dual core solution that works at 1,66GHz and 533Mhz for the FSB.

According to the rumors, Apple has been working on this platform for a while now: in fact, they claim that the company has received prototypes before any of the other partners from nVidia that have expressed their interest in Ion.

The use of an Atom processor for a system such as the Mac Mini could also have a future reason: with the launch of the Mac OS X 1.06 “Snow Leopard” on the marketp, Apple will have all the needed technology in order to make use of the GPU hardware acceleration thanks to Open CL. This feature allows the company to compensate the Atom processor’s performance level and would give Apple a way to build an economic yet flexible system.

Apple’s interest on the Ion platform could, however, be completely different. The new nVidia platform’s features seem to be quite adequate for a device such as Apple TV, where the low energy costs and the low noise are key elements that should be paired with the ability to handle high-definition contents. And those are tasks that Ion is more than capable of.