The cost-effective and HD-capable Ion migh find its way to some of Apple's new devices

 According to a recent report on the tech website Tom’s Hardware, Apple considers to fit the new NVIDIA Ion platform to its updated version of the Mac Mini portable computer. Moreover, the report also pointed out that even Apple TV might be powered by the same platform.

The writers at Tom’s Hardware stated that their source of the report is very close to the matter and that the hardware might prove to be the most cost-effective HD-capable platform on the market right now. NVIDIA Ion essentially consists of a dual-core Intel Atom N330 processor and an NVIDIA 9400M graphics unit, which has multi-core GPU with integrated OpenCL architecture.

The Atom-9400M combo will certainly do the job for rendering HD video content, as previously demoed by NVIDIA. Although the dual-core Atom processor will be, by no rights, as powerful as a Core 2 Duo CPU, reviewers agreed that it would handle most of the tasks of the everyday Mac Mini user.

The report also cited a source “close to NVIDIA” that claimed that Apple has already received a few functional units of the prototype version of the Ion platform, while other big manufacturers have only been provided with technical sheets. Moreover, the source stated that Apple would definitely equip the new version of Mac Mini with NVIDIA’s platform.

The Ion platform will be available on the upcoming release of MSI’s new nettop, the D120, which incorporates the same dual-core Atom and the 9400M chipset. As MSI aims its new product to be hooked to a TV and provide reasonable home-theater performance, Apple has all the reasons to do the same with the Mac Mini.

Even though many argued that the 1.6 GHz Atom N330 processor would not be cope with 1080p content, in a similar manner with its single-core N270 sibling, it is expected that Apple will make better use of the platform, as the Snow Leopard revision of the Mac OS X will support OpenCL and hence, will provide smoother performance.

While the Ion platform is “explicitly” planned to go with the new Mac Mini, the AppleTV-Ion combo remains just a rumor. Still, the current hardware of Apple TV hardly keeps up with high-definition encoding, so Apple might want to update this product, too.

However, it remains to be seen whether these rumors will turn out to be true, as Apple has not, neither confirmed or denied the information.

The Ion platform from NVIDIA is conceived in a similar manner as netbooks, as it is aimed to be a reasonably priced, energy efficient, tiny and quite capable piece of hardware.