Although VIA Technologies and Nvidia entered into an alliance to cooperate in the low-cost PC and MID markets earlier in the year, according to recent reports, Nvidia has used the alliance as a bargaining chip to negotiate with Intel, demanding Intel allow Nvidia"s IGP chipsets to enter the Atom platform ecosystem, according to sources at PC makers.
Nvidia"s MCP73 IGP chipset only supports single-channel memory and offers relatively low performance compared to current chipsets from both Nvidia and Intel making it a good fit for the Atom platform.