Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
NVIDIA Exiting Chipset Business Pending Resolution of Licensing Dispute With Intel
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Good riddance!
I guess this means no more nVidia for apple! Yaaay!
As an owner of a 2.4 SR mbp, I am glad of this news. Just serves nVidia right. The faulty graphics card they have in my mbp have blacked out on me during two presentations. And regularly blacks out when connected to a 24" external while I'm trading stocks -- not good when you buy into a position, and you can't see what's going on to know if you need to sell or move stops up to lock in gains!
I basically have a $2500 laptop that I cannot trust for anything critical - work or active investments. I've actually been looking around for a laptop "that just works", and they didn't have the apple logo on them... See ya later, nVidia! Don't let the door hit you from behind!
I guess this means no more nVidia for apple! Yaaay!
As an owner of a 2.4 SR mbp, I am glad of this news. Just serves nVidia right. The faulty graphics card they have in my mbp have blacked out on me during two presentations. And regularly blacks out when connected to a 24" external while I'm trading stocks -- not good when you buy into a position, and you can't see what's going on to know if you need to sell or move stops up to lock in gains!
I basically have a $2500 laptop that I cannot trust for anything critical - work or active investments. I've actually been looking around for a laptop "that just works", and they didn't have the apple logo on them... See ya later, nVidia! Don't let the door hit you from behind!
Same here. I've been in the market for a new iMac for a little over a year. The current offering is just not compelling enough to upgrade from my 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac (Late 2006). It would essentially be trading chassis designs.
nVidia 9400m was a big reason I stuck w/ the MB and apple.. bummer hope this means ATI for gfx and not Intel GMA.. ugh gross
let me see. if Intel is licensing the tech to Nvidia then Nvidia must have been told not to muscle onto Intel's territory since Intel OWNS the tech and wants the higher end stuff for itself. AMD also licenses tech from Intel. This stuff is bizarre.
Where are you getting your figures so far? (I'm just wondering that way I could compare) I was discussing this issue with Anand from Anandtech and he said that the Arrandale IGP would be on par with the 9400M. I mean, it was a brief twitter discussion so it wasn't totally in depth, but I could imagine Apple dropping Core2 to just use Arrandale.
Wouldn't happen until about end of 1st quarter 2010, but this is what I was imagining.
Of course, unless Apple decides to buy NVIDIA altogether...in other words, NVIDIA's message means two things:
NVIDIA IS DEAD.
AMD IS DEAD.
Good riddance, inferior products.
Agreed, but it really doesn't seem to be hurting them. They're still shipping plenty of product at decent margins based on their financial reports.
An Apple product is (likely) never going to be as cheap as an equivalent PC, but they do seem to be taking price more seriously now than they have in the past even as they try and maintain their strong margins. So by waiting to allow the yields to improve and the component prices to drop allows them to keep their retail price "low" (for an Apple product) and their margins healthy.
I haven't been following Apple in depth for a long period of time, but they strike me as a company that does things to their schedule because they know what their market on a holistic level wants even if that means alienating part of their market part of the time by not adopting the latest technologies and form factors immediately upon their market release.
Do they have a choice? I rather ATI then Apple make a blunder of the century mistakes as Microsoft did by designing their own graphic chipsets for the Xbox 360 that was thought to save tens of millions dollars but in the end costing them billions of dollars for repairs and system replacement due to RROD and E-74 issues. Resulting in a 54% for all Xbox 360s manufactured. I'm fine with Apple research into doing their own chipset but not taking that chance with its reputation on the line. With Google and now Walt Mossberg turning against them and yeah the old fart was worth mentioning. I rather see Apple soar then become crash-pone Microsoft.
Do they have a choice? I rather ATI then Apple make a blunder of the century mistakes as Microsoft did by designing their own graphic chipsets for the Xbox 360 that was thought to save tens of millions dollars but in the end costing them billions of dollars for repairs and system replacement due to RROD and E-74 issues. Resulting in a 54% for all Xbox 360s manufactured. I'm fine with Apple research into doing their own chipset but not taking that chance with its reputation on the line. With Google and now Walt Mossberg turning against them and yeah the old fart was worth mentioning. I rather see Apple soar then become crash-pone Microsoft.
Xbox 360 is a disaster. I am still suprised by how many people keep going back to it. You'd think they would learn.
So what businesses will nvidia have left? Integrated graphics only?
Seems like they are exiting everything, chipsets for Intel and AMD, and mid to high end graphics. If all of this is true then they are a sinking ship.
Seems like they are exiting everything, chipsets for Intel and AMD, and mid to high end graphics. If all of this is true then they are a sinking ship.
Again, NVIDIA might be bought by Apple...or just left to rot with its stillborn technologies.
There are initial numbers here. I do remember a more recent one where it was pitted against the 785G as well.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=20419&page=1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/clarkdale-sneakpeek.html
Just like the more educated user base abandoned Vista to move to Mac I have a feeling there might be another migration back to Windows for the hardware. There's going to be a much larger share with a second computer around the house.
Apple doesn't drop prices mid-cycle as Intel and other component manufacturers drop prices. A Mac you buy in the last days of availability earns much more than it did on day one.
Fermi isn't a chipset. It's the GT300 line of video cards and it seems to be all that nVidia has left to offer.
Nvidia's going to be just fine.
The WSJ just wrote about this last week when the move was speculated and estimated the entire business they'd lose from this would be as little as 3% of profits and no more than 13%.
Even at the high end of that estimate, the Tegra project alone should recoup more than what they'll lose by 2010 alone.
We may not see Nvidia in Apple products going forward, but that doesn't mean the company itself isn't healthy.
Their desktop sales have suffered considerably. There's no way they'll be able to ship as many desktop Macs this year as last year. This is the first year they've had negative decline in desktop shipments in a long time year over year, by quarter).
Q1 2006 667 (K)
Q2 2006 614
Q3 2006 529
Q4 2006 624
2434 (Desktop Macs shipped)
Q1 2007 637
Q2 2007 626
Q3 2007 634
Q4 2007 817
2714 (Desktop Macs shipped)
Q1 2008 977
Q2 2008 856
Q3 2008 943
Q4 2008 936
3712 (Desktop Macs shipped)
Q1 2009 728
Q2 2009 818
Q3 2009 849
Q4 2009 ???
2395 (Desktop Macs shipped so far, would need 1317 shipments to match previous year)
I started a thread last Friday when the news broke at Fudzilla. There is a benchmark link in there as well as a discussion of the implications.
Basically, the Arrandale GPU is anywhere between 50-80% of the 9400M, and the new 9400M (Ion2, who knows if they release it for Core 2-based laptops) will be twice as powerful as the 9400M. So the Arrandale GPU will be betwen 25-40% the performance of what could have been Nvidia's new DMI-based chipset.
Intel is being a huge b*tch. It cant win the integrated GPU wars, so throw around legal tactics to kill of Nvidia's chipset business. Apple should be angry with Intel, but they aren't too happy with Nvidia either because of the whole issue with defective 8800 GPUs from 2006-2008 that cost Apple a bit of money in warranty work.
I'd have a hard time thinking that Apple would happily degrade the graphics unit after they put all that work into OpenCL, but I really don't see a choice - Intel's awful GPU or putting a discrete graphics chip (Nvidia's GT210 or ATI's 4330) in all their "pro" laptops and iMacs when they're transitioned to Core i3/5/7 chips.
Folks Apple can still stay with NVIDIA for DGP products while using Intel chipsets. They aren't forced to use AMD (ATI) DGP products as a result of NVIDIA halting chipset development while this licensing issue is resolved (one way or the other).
I hope Apple picks the best performing product, regardless of manufacturer, for the power/thermal budget of each system they design.
What isn't clear is what IGP products would be available to Apple outside of Intel's own IGP when using Intel chipsets. Personally I hope Apple moves away from IGP as a result of this since Intel's versions are still lagging behind the likes of NVIDIA and AMD... given power/thermal/costs however we may have Intel IGP on the low end.
I hope Apple picks the best performing product, regardless of manufacturer, for the power/thermal budget of each system they design.
What isn't clear is what IGP products would be available to Apple outside of Intel's own IGP when using Intel chipsets. Personally I hope Apple moves away from IGP as a result of this since Intel's versions are still lagging behind the likes of NVIDIA and AMD... given power/thermal/costs however we may have Intel IGP on the low end.
Should Apple see a significant drop in sales of current generation product when a new generation of hardware ships, that will likely spur them to adopt new generations of hardware quicker. But with Macintosh hardware ownership lifecycles being somewhat long-lived even with the limited upgradeability offered in most of the product line...
For the moment, they still appear to be able to get even educated people to buy the "old stuff" at full price even in the face of an imminent refresh coming based on many of the comments in the MacBook/iMac/Mac Mini refresh thread. As such, Apple doesn't appear to feel the need to refresh their product line as often as the Windows PC manufacturers need to do (which often requires them to discount their inventory to do so).
All that being said, I do agree with you that a quicker refresh cycle would be nice for those of us who are ready, willing and able to replace our hardware on a faster basis.
PA SEMI? I can't believe nobody has suggested it, maybe it's just way to far of a stretch, but... Is it possible Apple might develop thier own graphics chipset? Seems unlikely to me but worth the thought....
This arricle is poorly written only because it makes it sound like Nvidia is drop production of everthing.... They're not, and being any Apple site it'd be nice if it discussed what Apple's likely options are going forward...
This arricle is poorly written only because it makes it sound like Nvidia is drop production of everthing.... They're not, and being any Apple site it'd be nice if it discussed what Apple's likely options are going forward...
I don't understand why Apple couldn't just use ATI chips. Heck, I have a passively cooled graphics card that's more advanced then the 4330. If Apple wanted to, they could put ATI graphics cards in all of the "Pro" models, and leave the IIG for the non-pro models.
This would also open them up to making the iMac a non-pro machine, as differentiated by the video card, and introduce the mac tower, with an ATI user-upgradable card.
All
of this is going to put apple in a really tough spot. Do they soldier on with current products for another 6-12 months and simply cut prices to stave off defection and win new business that way?
Any new chassis that apple releases is going to have to be quad ready. Nothing makes sense as you can't re-use a c2d chipset for quad. Not to mention this graphics chipset nightmare.
All of this leaves me worried that we will see a very underwhelming fall refresh on the mini and iMac.
of this is going to put apple in a really tough spot. Do they soldier on with current products for another 6-12 months and simply cut prices to stave off defection and win new business that way?
Any new chassis that apple releases is going to have to be quad ready. Nothing makes sense as you can't re-use a c2d chipset for quad. Not to mention this graphics chipset nightmare.
All of this leaves me worried that we will see a very underwhelming fall refresh on the mini and iMac.