NVIDIA and HP have shaken up the PC market with the introduction of a new Il.6-inch netbook that delivers many of the capabilities of a full-sized notebook. The HPMini 311 takes advantage of NVIDIAION graphics to deliver a big visual experience with HD video, accelerated video editing, and support for casual gaming in a small, sleek package. NVIDIA ION is a small but powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) that works together with a low power CPU to generate exceptional performance for compact, energy-efficient systems. ION's highly integrated, energy-saving design delivers the extended battery life mobile customers demand.

Mini 311 ships with Windows XP and features an 11.6-inch diagonal LED display available in high-definition 1366x768 resolution. It includes HDMI and VGA video connectors to output video up to 1080p onto a larger screen like an HDTV. The Mini also includes ArcSoft SimHD, which instantly converts most standard-definition video to near high definition quality. SimHD uses the NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture present on NVIDIA GPUs to perform this upscaling faster than on a CPU.

In addition to the HP Mini 311, more than 50 other ION-based products are scheduled for release this year. ION graphics deliver a premium experience in small, low-powered PCs with support for all versions of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, outstanding HD video including 1080p, battery life that is comparable with other netbooks, stunning HD video through an external monitor via HDMI, mainstream games including Spore, Ice Age, and Wall-E, hardware acceleration for NVIDIA CUDA-based applications such as vReveal, Badaboom, SimHD plug-in for Total Media Theater, and Super LoiLoScope, as well as 24-bit 8¬channel LPCM uncompressed audio through HDMI.