ATI envied NVIDIA Optimus

NVIDIA’s Optimus technology has been a great success, and as ATI is gradually advancing in the mobile GPU market, they want to come up with something similar, thus further increasing their share.

The Reds had a similar technology called ATI Switchable Graphics before NVIDIA, but there the user had to manually switch between discrete graphics and the integrated graphics controller. The current idea is that ATI’s “Optimus” will do exactly the same thing as the Greens: it will automatically switch between IGP and GPU in real time. It shuts down the dedicated GPU when you don't need it because you're running an application that can handle the power of IGP, saving battery life and putting the GPU to work when using a more computationally intensive program. 

The technology will feature in both Intel and AMD-based notebooks, as it will also support Intel's integrated graphics controllers. Notebook manufacturers are waiting for ATI’s solution by the end of the year, but exactly when is still obscured.