NVIDIA Exiting Chipset Business Pending Resolution of Licensing Dispute With Intel

[Terminal.app]

I'm greatly disturbed after reading this thread.

In the past few years, Apple has gone from having a mediocre OS + awesome hardware, to awesome OS + hardware that is beyond mediocre. I love Snow Leopard, but the very idea of Intel graphics, or integrated graphics period, makes me shudder. As does being stuck on Core 2 until it becomes as obsolete as the Intel 8008. Apple used to use discrete/dedicated GPUs even in its budget models (i.e. PPC Mac mini.) Anyone remember how Apple's ads used to shout "The FASTEST" and "The Most POWERFUL" and "BLAZINGLY FAST"? Now it's "OMG look how thin!" and "OMG look how green!"

The 9600M in my MacBook Pro preforms fine here in October 2009, but what about in a couple years when I sell this computer and am looking to buy a new one? I try to be as cutting-edge as possible, but from the way things are looking, the line-up in two years may be even worse than the one we have now.

The Mac Pro and Xserve are pretty much the only good Macs left, but that's out of the price range of the majority of users, including myself. For now, anyway. Sandy Bridge Mac Pro please, God?

 

[diamond.g]

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.

The GPU in the 360 is actually precursor to the 2000/3000 series ATI chips. Just like how the PS3 is using a G70/71.

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.

Hmm, what good does buying nvidia bring Apple? They make most of their sales on PC parts (discreet graphics). Apple doesn't sell enough systems to make that sale (and thus the discontinuation of PC GPUs) worthwhile (IMHO).

 

[jackies35]

motherboard, nVidia, 9400 etc.... blah blah...

Tell me about it. I could get a motherboard with an integrated 3200 about a year ago, and now I think they're up to 4550's integrated into a motherboard... And nVidia was trying to counter it with 9400, and then complains when their sales are down? Oh boo hoo!

So what's left... no more chipsets, graphics cards... Does nVidia even make anything else?

I am not trying to be rude or pick on Apple, but JadedMonkey, if you know what you are talking about, then Apple need to get on board... Many of you on here are well knowledgable and could see why the complains on low sales! You guys are genius! I am not trying to "gas you up" or say that you should be the next Jobs, but what the hell is wrong with apple's staff, engineering team, programming team, etc...


Why Apple would do such a think and squeeze a 9400 on a nVidia??

SOMEBODY HAVE TO hit up those development forums and start pointing fingers, saying names, and sharing this info. I am quite sure someone on here knows the programmers at Apple, or team of developers, or staff, or someone?!?!?1

I am trying to buy me an iMac and now the next new generation is about to drop, I am going to hold off. I am quite sure me and 55,000 other people is going to wait for the new iMac and hope a quad core is in it....

Kudos to you JadedMonkey and others! Thank God you know what you know...

Apple & Staff need to read what's going on these forums and learn for it.... Because I am!!

 

[Teskox]

Sometimes Rumors shouldn't even be posted ...

especially when they are beyond even normal logic ... sigh

Haven't bothered to read all the comments but surely someone else has posted this by now ... but maybe not people still seem worred after several pages of comments ... little more reseearch wouldn't hurt before posting or at least updating the post ...

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/10/08/nvidia_statement_on_chipset_business

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/10/07/nvidia_abandons_market6363636363/

e

edit:typo

 

[TheStrudel]

I'm sure by the reason there is a Mac 5870, there will be PC 5870s with 1.5 GB or 2 GB of RAM. There are already 2 GB 4870s. Of course,  still needs to fix the 2 GB VRAM bug.

I agree that it would be good to have Nvidia still in the game, but...you have to admit, their performance with failure rates and drivers on Macs has been subpar for the price. ATI's been killing them on price/performance for so long now.

 

[50548]

AMD is ATI as well. And so you've just pronounced BOTH major producers of high-end graphics chips to be dead and cheered about it. I guess you've no idea how awful Intels' graphics chips are. If both did die off with no one taking over them, graphics would be set back about 6 years in development.

As I said, there are 2 possibilities:

- Apple buys NVIDIA or ATi;

- Apple reinvents the market and creates a new GPU powerhouse...impossible? That's exactly what they did with personal computers, music players, smartphones and soon tablets...not to mention the in-house expertise they've had since the advent of the Apple // line.

 

[Macinposh]

I agree that it would be good to have Nvidia still in the game, but...you have to admit, their performance with failure rates and drivers on Macs has been subpar for the price.

Indeed.
That (and amd/ati going tits up) would be a disaster for the computer industry in general. Talk about a slowdown in innovations and development of new services.
Nowadays putting up a competing company from scratch is practically an impossibility due to the interstellar cost of development and manufacturing.
Talk about Dark Ages of computing.
Intel could abuse its monopoly at free will,slow down the development and yank up the prices. Well,untill they would go too far and some obscure company from china would start to kick their testiclos.

 

[50548]

Apple writes the drivers for the GPU's they use. SO if you want to blame someone for OS X-GPU-drivers, blame Apple.

Those drivers are written by Apple, not NVIDIA...

Again, you are WRONG. Apple does NOT write any drivers, which are always copyrighted NVIDIA. In other words, NVIDIA drivers are created and owned by NVIDIA and NO ONE else.

Apple simply manages the front office, wrapping them as OS X updates, providing support and handling customer complaints (as is the case with any built-in car accessory sold by your dealer but produced by someone else like Delphi).

Please see below:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/nvidiaquadrofx4800evgagtx285.html

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/14/211242

 

[rtdunham]

Regardless of Apple and NVIDIA's relationship, however, the dispute with Intel over licensing appears to be signaling an end to their chipset partnership...

The quote's from the third paragraph of the story; the italics are mine.

Is "their" intended to refer to the apple/NVIDIA partnership? Or the NVIDIA/Intel partnership? Grammatically, it'd be the former. But the latter seem to have more of a "chip" partnership than the apple/NVIDIA relationship. Sometimes people give a hard time to someone who points out a spelling or punctuation or grammatical error on the forum. But as can be seen here, sometimes it makes a big difference.

So, author....?

 

[Topper]

I agree that it would be good to have Nvidia still in the game, but...you have to admit, their performance with failure rates and drivers on Macs has been subpar for the price. ATI's been killing them on price/performance for so long now.

Yes, price/performance, you are correct, ATI comes in number one.
Performance with failure rates? I'm not sure I agree that statement. I've had no problems with either the 8800 GT or the GTX 285.
I'll also agree with you that the Nvidia drivers are subpar for Macs.

The GTX 285 is my choice because I work with both OS X and WinXP.

At this time I'd prefer the GTX 380.
If the HD 5870 works well with Windows and OpenCL in OS X, I'll consider it.
.

 

[Wakashizuma]

As I said, there are 2 possibilities:

- Apple buys NVIDIA or ATi;

- Apple reinvents the market and creates a new GPU powerhouse...impossible? That's exactly what they did with personal computers, music players, smartphones and soon tablets...not to mention the in-house expertise they've had since the advent of the Apple // line.

Intel is one of the most advanced and experienced chip makers in the world. They own some of the world's finest fabs and they already have 22nm chips working. They have massive amount of cash and resources to do any chip development
YET they are struggling to get their Larrabee chips working. Their Larrabee show at IDF was underwhelming and has people questioning the future of Larrabee. So if Intel with all their might and power (and massive engineering capacity) struggle to get a GPU working, what makes you think Apple can all of a sudden make a killer GPU and make nVidia and ATI obsolete?

While at it, Apple may start making CPUs, GPUs, Hard drives, sound cards and what have you and make all the hardware companies obsolete!
Seriously, get real!

 

[50548]

While at it, Apple may start making CPUs, GPUs, Hard drives, sound cards and what have you and make all the hardware companies obsolete!
Seriously, get real!

People said exactly the same thing when Apple considered making a phone. Besides, Apple has deep experience in designing, developing and manufacturing pretty much any personal computer parts. Despite their marketing blunders in the 80s and 90s, Apple demonstrated that they could manufacture or outsource manufacturing of anything they wanted, from chipsets to cables, and from CD-ROM players to full-blown printers.

But more realistically, they might just buy one of the GPU makers and be done with it...or demand from Intel an even better offering in graphics terms.

 

[alecgold]

Indeed.
That (and amd/ati going tits up) would be a disaster for the computer industry in general. Talk about a slowdown in innovations and development of new services.
Nowadays putting up a competing company from scratch is practically an impossibility due to the interstellar cost of development and manufacturing.
Talk about Dark Ages of computing.
Intel could abuse its monopoly at free will,slow down the development and yank up the prices. Well,untill they would go too far and some obscure company from china would start to kick their testiclos.

I think such a company in China/Taiwan already exists. They make these products already and at the bankruptcy they could buy the patents and just get on with it. That might set the development back, but it would most likely not be the Dark Ages...

 

[jf8]

People said exactly the same thing when Apple considered making a phone. Besides, Apple has deep experience in designing, developing and manufacturing pretty much any personal computer parts. Despite their marketing blunders in the 80s and 90s, Apple demonstrated that they could manufacture or outsource manufacturing of anything they wanted, from chipsets to cables, and from CD-ROM players to full-blown printers.

Apple did not design the CPU, GPU, radios, RAM, or flash memory in iPhones. They use standard parts from vendors like Broadcom, Samsung, Infineon, etc.

 

[Wakashizuma]

People said exactly the same thing when Apple considered making a phone. Besides, Apple has deep experience in designing, developing and manufacturing pretty much any personal computer parts. Despite their marketing blunders in the 80s and 90s, Apple demonstrated that they could manufacture or outsource manufacturing of anything they wanted, from chipsets to cables, and from CD-ROM players to full-blown printers.

But more realistically, they might just buy one of the GPU makers and be done with it...or demand from Intel an even better offering in graphics terms.

Apple doesnt have the engineering capacity nor the resources to design CPUs and GPUs and they have never done. AMD with all their experience cannot compete with Intel let alone someone like Apple who has designed anything compex like a processor. Even Sony goes to someone like IBM or nVidia to do the parts for their consoles despite having their own engineering team. These chips are far more complex to build compared to "thin" desktops and Apple TVs you know!

It's entirely possible to buy one of the GPU makers but then Apple doesnt have enough marketshare for their chips to be profitable unless they are willing to let the company market their products for PCs as well!

 

[scroto]

As I said, there are 2 possibilities:

- Apple buys NVIDIA or ATi;

- Apple reinvents the market and creates a new GPU powerhouse...impossible? That's exactly what they did with personal computers, music players, smartphones and soon tablets...not to mention the in-house expertise they've had since the advent of the Apple // line.

Wow dude, lay off the apple Koolaid

 

[satcomer]

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....

That exactly what I thought. Apple as a manufacture must have knew something like this would happen and bought PA to br future proofed.

I still am amazed that today with Intel Chips that we as Mac user haven't seen update graphics (even third party) that is close to be on par with the Windows versions of graphic cards (in releasing to public + selling).

 

[ao0791]

And in the performance department they're an embarrassment to the rest of the graphics industry - they even had to license a GPU from STMicroelectronics for the Atom (GMA500) because they couldn't build their own to fit in the low power envelope.

Accuracy fail.

GMA500 has nothing to do with STM.

'791

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

I believe this only affects nVidia's mobile chipset but has no impact on nVidia's graphics cards. I believe the graphics card business is not impacted by this at all.

 

[CQd44]

As I said, there are 2 possibilities:

- Apple buys NVIDIA or ATi;

- Apple reinvents the market and creates a new GPU powerhouse...impossible? That's exactly what they did with personal computers, music players, smartphones and soon tablets...not to mention the in-house expertise they've had since the advent of the Apple // line.

no thank you. to both of those. I do not want unnecessary premiums on my GPUs.

 

[cumanzor]

As I said, there are 2 possibilities:

- Apple buys NVIDIA or ATi;

- Apple reinvents the market and creates a new GPU powerhouse...impossible? That's exactly what they did with personal computers, music players, smartphones and soon tablets...not to mention the in-house expertise they've had since the advent of the Apple // line.

Well, Apple won't buy AMD. (ATI is AMD now, remember). Also, Apple doesn't have much experience in hardware design. Hardware is used in their computers is pretty much the same used in PCs. Designing a processor is not something any company can do overnight, reinventing the wheel in this area is very difficult since this requires an actual leap in current technology, real engineering effort and skills, not just marketing skills.

nVidia is not going anywhere, btw. Ati will probably take the crown this time with the release of the 5xxx line, and this is definitely good. Nvidia needs to improve their technology and lower their prices. Also, all the **** talking about nvidia going down comes from Charlie Demerjian, which is nothing more than a Ati fanboy.

 

[Hugh]

Call Apple

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!

Did you try calling Apple about this? Maybe they might fix it for free.... :/


Hugh

 

[nanofrog]

That (and amd/ati going tits up) would be a disaster for the computer industry in general. Talk about a slowdown in innovations and development of new services.

I don't think AMD is going "tits up" just yet. Their CPU business isn't stellar by any means, but isn't outright down for the count just yet (IIRC, they've some new parts in the works that could improve the situation for them). But their chipset and GPU business is doing well it seems. Really well for the GPU side. They can under sell the competition in multiple areas, and the chipset end helps out the CPU portion, as it makes for a low cost alternative system. These can be really important to the enterprise community, not just consumers. And the current economy isn't going to hurt this market, but rather help it. People and corporations still need computers, and they're interested in saving funds where ever possible.

Nowadays putting up a competing company from scratch is practically an impossibility due to the interstellar cost of development and manufacturing.

Definitely true, as a fab facility is over $3 Billion USD to develop above any chip design. But the latest "idea" is to become a Fabless Semiconductor house. Which is nothing more than design, and either license that design out (i.e ARM processors), or have a 3rd party fab facility produce the parts, and sell them off in the same manner GPU's are sold to graphics card makers (sells just the chip and give them a reference design).

Intel could abuse its monopoly at free will,slow down the development and yank up the prices. Well,until they would go too far and some obscure company from china would start to kick their testicles.

It's possible, and something I hope never happens. The P4 days all over again, but likely notably worse.

At this time I'd prefer the GTX 380.
If the HD 5870 works well with Windows and OpenCL in OS X, I'll consider it.
.

The 5870 was developed with OpenCL (GPGPU usage) in mind. How it would stack up against the GTX380, isn't yet known.

I think such a company in China/Taiwan already exists. They make these products already and at the bankruptcy they could buy the patents and just get on with it. That might set the development back, but it would most likely not be the Dark Ages...

Quite possible. Though the company that does it could be from anywhere, including Korea. Think Samsung wanting in on additional markets.

I'm not sure if nVidia's actually dead yet, but it will depend on a few factors. Cash reserves, cash hemorrhage rate (gives an idea how long they could potentially hold out to develop/market new gear), new designs that are or near ready for production, and whether or not management will do the right thing and step down (given they control the majority of the stock).

I believe this only affects nVidia's mobile chipset but has no impact on nVidia's graphics cards. I believe the graphics card business is not impacted by this at all.

It can though. If the cash hemorrhaged out is rapid enough, it can deplete any cash reserve in a serious hurry. So they may not be able to salvage the company.

But it seems, the mistakes nVidia's made are affecting the entire organization. Not just one segment. Their mobile segment is in trouble, the chipset section, and it seems the desktop graphics division is as well, though it's in better shape, as they've the GT300 chips due out Q4 of this year (assuming they've not had problems). I'm not sure if it can save them or not, but it's a possibility, if they've the cash to help hold out, and don't have any more problems. It's a tall order though, and we'll have to wait and see.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Anybody who says that Apple can Re-Invent the GPU market needs to have their heads checked. Its taken years for ATi/nVidia to get where they have and the Labaree is basically a CPU...

*Click

What if Apple decides to Adopt the Labaree when its released? I'm sure Intel will give them a Nice package discount to help spread its product like they do with the Atoms.

Companies get a discount if they Buy an Atom and the GMA chip, what if Intel gives discounts for the Labaree, iX combos.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Nvidia-Atom-Ion-Anticompetitive,7843.html

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Anybody who says that Apple can Re-Invent the GPU market needs to have their heads checked.

Ah, come on man! The Almighty Steve can do ANYTHING. Stop that blasphemy and join the chosen few at the Church of Apple. You must have faith that Steve will deliver the chips to the chosen few.