Doing things the right way, as Mamma once may have said, isn't always the easy way. In actuality, from a hardware design perspective, NVIDIA's new Optimus design approach is significantly more simplified. The discrete GPU simply sends its output to the integrated graphics core in the chipset--the IGP acts much like a pass though. However, it's how this gets done that is the real "magic" that NVIDIA has developed with Optimus. It's not as simple as just "sending the data along" to the IGP core for display. Remember, that IGP wants to control the output lines when it's active. We'll get into how NVIDIA pulls off a bit of trickery on the IGP to achieve this next. In the mean time, here's a demo of NVIDIA Optimus technology in action that we've put together for your edification and entertainment..



Link: HotHardware