Katie MarsalThe supposed discussion with NVIDIA insiders on Friday follows earlier concerns that the electronics giants were at odds with each other over their long-term partnership for developing Mac graphics technology.
After its investigation, Fudzilla was convinced that the two were "doing just fine" and that Apple is still snapping up system chipsets and other components as it has in recent weeks. The relationship is believed so strong, in fact, that NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang personally has "a lot of respect" for Apple and subsequently gets that respect out of the company as a whole.
Murmurs of a spat began on Wednesday and centered on possible fallout over the chronic graphics failure problems that affected the GeForce 8600M in 2007 and early 2008 MacBook Pros, gradually "cooking" the notebook graphics chips until they either display corrupted video or none at all. In the now disputed account of events, Apple had alleged that NVIDIA wasn't being honest regarding the quality of certain parts and was reputedly arrogant in what it thought it could negotiate from the other firm.
A reversal of Apple's attitude would be a sharp one as NVIDIA graphics are fundamental to its current Mac lineup. All MacBooks, the Mac mini and the iMac use a GeForce 9400M to provide better-than-average integrated graphics without damaging battery life. It moreover provides hardware acceleration for H.264 video and will eventually give even low-end systems acceleration of non-visual tasks using the OpenCL standard found in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Neither Apple nor NVIDIA has stepped in to settle the question.
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Wesley Hilliard
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
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29 Comments
I figure the truth is somewhere in between the two reports. It’s not a secret that Jen-Hsun Huang has blamed Apple for the problems with their GPUs in MBPs.
There probably was a disagreement though it was most likely nothing affecting business terms.
WELL DUH. They are OBVIOUSLY still picking up 9400M chipsets as they are selling those in the MacBooks.
The drop will be in the next major revisions in the product lines. It won't be before they get a comparable solution from AMD or Intel and will probably coincide with a major change away from Core 2 Due to a new generation.
This makes sense. NVIDIA might be an arrogant company, but I hope they are not stupid enough to loose this great business opportunity with the Apple. The success of the upcoming SL will also depend upon the CUDA architecture supported in NVIDIA graphics. So to me it looks unreasonable that they will decide to part their ways for now. Maybe in future it could happen if the Apple could find a reasonable substitute to the NViDIA. Otherwise these rumors of breaking the partnership doesn't make any sense to me.
Until Apple walks away from Nvidia, we will never know the truth. Apple is the king in this relationship. As far as Intel is not kicking Nvidia to the poor house, Apple will stick with Nvidia.
Nvidia is not stupid enough to lose a big account like Apple. They will bend over backwards to give Apple what it needs. Every company that deals with Apple does, even Intel.