The GC depth distribution is better in Ion Torrent from Figure 1. In Ion Torrent, the sequencing depth is similar while the GC content is from 63% to 73%. However in HiSeq 2000, the average sequencing depth is 4x when the GC content is 60%, while it is 3x with 70% GC content.

Ion Torrent has already released Ion 314 and 316 and planned to launch Ion 318 chips in late 2011. The chips are different in the number of wells resulting in higher production within the same sequencing time. The Ion 318 chip enables the production of >1 Gb data in 2 hours. Read length is expected to increase to >400 bp in 2012.