nvidia has just released information about its optimus technology which it claims can increase the battery life in notebooks having a specific nvidia graphics card and an integrated intel graphics , although integrated AMD solutions are not supported.

According to nvidia the optimus technology automatically routes the processing of any graphics needs of applications to either the nvidia GPU or the integrated GPU based on the requirements and the complexity of the process in question.

Meanwhile whenever the nvidia GPU is not required it would automatically switch off leading to significant power savings. This is made possible by using a nvidia software utility which creates profiles for all applications and then automatically diverts the resources according to need.

If it is indeed good it could offer a win-win situation for customer and manufactures alike because the customer could still opt for a high end gpu without worry for the battery life. Nvidia plans to release the technology to ASUS notebooks soon.