On Wednesday, Nvidia announced that Microsoft Corporation had certified its Ion platform in order for it to be used with the tech giant’s Windows Vista operating system, while one day earlier, Nvidia's chief executive said that netbooks fitted with the Ion platform would be coming from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in a short time.

Microsoft has certified the Ion platform with Windows Vista Home Premium via their Windows Hardware Quality Labs  (WHQL) program, which works by validating hardware as being stable.

The Nvidia Ion platform is the result of a combination between an Intel Atom processor and an Nvidia graphics processor.

Drew Henry, general manager of the MCP business unit at Nvidia, said in a statement he made that the Nvidia Ion platform and the Windows operating system were a perfect match for each other, adding that having Microsoft alongside to push for the platform into lower-priced netbooks and small desktop PCs was a major step for Nvidia and also an important advantage for consumers.

In a conference call held Wednesday, Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang stated that theOEM Ion support was to come soon, adding that in the near future, the platform would be shipping from all the major OEMs.

During the same conference call, Huang announced that the Tegra chip for mobile devices would start to ship in the second half of this year.