An Nvidia spokesperson denied the news saying,"We have already announced that we have withdrawn from the Intel chipset marketplace. We have no plans to return to it and are not developing new Intel chipset products."
If that's true, this leaves Apple no option but to either find a way to get a dedicated GPU inside the lower-end products or jump ship to AMD. They simply can't use SB alone with no OpenCL support but then if they jump to AMD, they likely won't benefit from Light Peak and given that a Mac system was used to demo it, it seems likely they will be using it.
If they can get the 330M + SB into the low-end, that would be fine though. Other manufacturers have managed to do this albeit with a slightly higher cost. But Llano would be more appealing that this for power consumption and size.
There's a bullet on a plate sitting in front of Steve Jobs. He knows he's going to have to bite it sooner or later.
Damn Intel. I thought the legal system would have put and end to their BundleGate of not only forcing bullsh*t GPUs to everyone but also blocking out Nvidia like that. If BundleGate is not monopolistic and anti-competitive, whatever, I don't know what is.
Thank goodness for Apple and ARM. We're going to see some fantastic stuff come out of that over the next 5 years.
Nvidia is clear (with the lawsuit settlement) to make chipsets for Intel's current platforms- but they won't. The development cycle for those products is measured in years and they'll never catch up.
I would venture, after looking through the benchmarks eg. Anandtech, Zacate would not be good enough for even the 11" 1.4ghz MBA. There's hope for Llano, but again it's a wait-and-see thing. AMD's GPUs are of course sweet, but their CPU tech still leaves a little more to be desired. They are neither at the level of ARM on one side nor Core 2 on the other.
Well 64 bit x86 will never be at ARM power (watts) levels but the again ARM doesn't perform like an X86.
As to competeing with Core 2 Zacate does come up slightly slow in some bench marks but we are still talking about lower power profiles. Frankly here is where having a machine running Mac OS on Zacate would be interesting as we could do direct comparisons to the slow Core 2s in the AIRs.
Watt I'm really hoping for is that AMD can ramp clock rate on Zacate quickly. If they can get to 2GHz I believe they could actually be an improvement over the core 2's in the 11" AIRs.
In any event the thing with Bobcat is that it really has no direct intel competition unless you look at Intels ULV chips. Some of those intel ULV chips are clocked awfully low so it isn't clear that zacate will look all that bad. In reality Zacate is a very powerful solution considering it's size and current draw.
Quote:
I wish the best for AMD CPU and APUs in 2011 but it's going to be challenging for them. They will get design wins with various manufacturers of course, because of cost and GPU performance helping them market the APUs. Also because the APUs will be better than most Atoms for example Zacate vs Atom.
Zacate pretty much out performs all Atoms and probably will for all of 2011. That is pretty impressive considering the chips size which is real close to Atom. Plus with Zacate the use of OpenCL is a no brainer so the weak SIMD units of AMDs hardware means nothing.
I really want to see AMD succeed with this myself. My hope is that AMD will have a clean clockrate ramp and a clean transition to enhanced parts. They really need to make Zacate into "THE" low power low end platform.
Quote:
This all is hell for Apple because their next MBP 13" has to be at least Core i3s which means a discrete GPU and also having to make it thinner and lighter and throw out the ODD and still deliver 8-10 hours of battery life. Apple has at most 1 more revision of MBP 13" with Core 2 Duo, after that it simply cannot have Core 2 anymore from competitive standpoints. Then again, they have to differentiate the MBA 13" from the MBP 13" so the MBP 13" can't be too sweet compared to the MBA 13".
Apple needs to make the 13" MBP into a true pro machine and that means much better processor performance. Here I mean bothe the GPU and the CPU. If that means a descrete chip than so be it. As long as there is a measurable performance increase in each of the MBP models AMD chips will do the job.
As to the 13" and making it sweet, it needs to be as sweet as the hardware costs allow. In other words the markets are significantly different with pros expecting much more out of the machine.
Quote:
Hah. Maybe what I'm saying is I want a MBP 15" with Core i5 and Nvidia 460 class graphics at the same or lighter weight than the current MBP 13" and with strongly MBA-inspired design. I'll pay up to $2,000 USD for that. I know, one can dream, it will come someday. Oh and that MBP 15" should have 320GB SSD.
I see I'm not the only one dreaming about an upgraded 15" MBP!!!!!
As to that SSD, what I'm hoping for is a number of slots for those blade type SSDs. Four slots would be just about right. That would allow for Apple selling us 256GB in one slot, adding 256 in another with future expansion possible when the blades double in size. In the 15" four slots should be very doable.
There's a bullet on a plate sitting in front of Steve Jobs. He knows he's going to have to bite it sooner or later.
Something needs to happen.
Quote:
Damn Intel. I thought the legal system would have put and end to their BundleGate of not only forcing bullsh*t GPUs to everyone but also blocking out Nvidia like that. If BundleGate is not monopolistic and anti-competitive, whatever, I don't know what is.
Intel should have recognized it's weakness and purchased NVidia. At least someone at AMD has a vision that drove them to purchase ATI. Further that vision seems to have a recognition that Somethings are better done on the GPU.
Quote:
Thank goodness for Apple and ARM. We're going to see some fantastic stuff come out of that over the next 5 years.
Maybe. The problem is that ARM isn't a CPU performance powerhouse. It is great hardware for extremely portable devices but ARM has yet to deliver a processor that is suitable for a laptop. In any event I can hardly wait to see what Apples custom tablet processor will look like. It will be very interesting to see if it is a straight Cortex A9 implementation or if they customized the IP further.
Comments
NVidia have also refuted the South Bridge IGP + SB option:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100901PD215.html
An Nvidia spokesperson denied the news saying,"We have already announced that we have withdrawn from the Intel chipset marketplace. We have no plans to return to it and are not developing new Intel chipset products."
If that's true, this leaves Apple no option but to either find a way to get a dedicated GPU inside the lower-end products or jump ship to AMD. They simply can't use SB alone with no OpenCL support but then if they jump to AMD, they likely won't benefit from Light Peak and given that a Mac system was used to demo it, it seems likely they will be using it.
If they can get the 330M + SB into the low-end, that would be fine though. Other manufacturers have managed to do this albeit with a slightly higher cost. But Llano would be more appealing that this for power consumption and size.
There's a bullet on a plate sitting in front of Steve Jobs. He knows he's going to have to bite it sooner or later.
Damn Intel. I thought the legal system would have put and end to their BundleGate of not only forcing bullsh*t GPUs to everyone but also blocking out Nvidia like that. If BundleGate is not monopolistic and anti-competitive, whatever, I don't know what is.
Thank goodness for Apple and ARM. We're going to see some fantastic stuff come out of that over the next 5 years.
I would venture, after looking through the benchmarks eg. Anandtech, Zacate would not be good enough for even the 11" 1.4ghz MBA. There's hope for Llano, but again it's a wait-and-see thing. AMD's GPUs are of course sweet, but their CPU tech still leaves a little more to be desired. They are neither at the level of ARM on one side nor Core 2 on the other.
Well 64 bit x86 will never be at ARM power (watts) levels but the again ARM doesn't perform like an X86.
As to competeing with Core 2 Zacate does come up slightly slow in some bench marks but we are still talking about lower power profiles. Frankly here is where having a machine running Mac OS on Zacate would be interesting as we could do direct comparisons to the slow Core 2s in the AIRs.
Watt I'm really hoping for is that AMD can ramp clock rate on Zacate quickly. If they can get to 2GHz I believe they could actually be an improvement over the core 2's in the 11" AIRs.
In any event the thing with Bobcat is that it really has no direct intel competition unless you look at Intels ULV chips. Some of those intel ULV chips are clocked awfully low so it isn't clear that zacate will look all that bad. In reality Zacate is a very powerful solution considering it's size and current draw.
I wish the best for AMD CPU and APUs in 2011 but it's going to be challenging for them. They will get design wins with various manufacturers of course, because of cost and GPU performance helping them market the APUs. Also because the APUs will be better than most Atoms for example Zacate vs Atom.
Zacate pretty much out performs all Atoms and probably will for all of 2011. That is pretty impressive considering the chips size which is real close to Atom. Plus with Zacate the use of OpenCL is a no brainer so the weak SIMD units of AMDs hardware means nothing.
I really want to see AMD succeed with this myself. My hope is that AMD will have a clean clockrate ramp and a clean transition to enhanced parts. They really need to make Zacate into "THE" low power low end platform.
This all is hell for Apple because their next MBP 13" has to be at least Core i3s which means a discrete GPU and also having to make it thinner and lighter and throw out the ODD and still deliver 8-10 hours of battery life. Apple has at most 1 more revision of MBP 13" with Core 2 Duo, after that it simply cannot have Core 2 anymore from competitive standpoints. Then again, they have to differentiate the MBA 13" from the MBP 13" so the MBP 13" can't be too sweet compared to the MBA 13".
Apple needs to make the 13" MBP into a true pro machine and that means much better processor performance. Here I mean bothe the GPU and the CPU. If that means a descrete chip than so be it. As long as there is a measurable performance increase in each of the MBP models AMD chips will do the job.
As to the 13" and making it sweet, it needs to be as sweet as the hardware costs allow. In other words the markets are significantly different with pros expecting much more out of the machine.
Hah. Maybe what I'm saying is I want a MBP 15" with Core i5 and Nvidia 460 class graphics at the same or lighter weight than the current MBP 13" and with strongly MBA-inspired design. I'll pay up to $2,000 USD for that. I know, one can dream, it will come someday. Oh and that MBP 15" should have 320GB SSD.
I see I'm not the only one dreaming about an upgraded 15" MBP!!!!!
As to that SSD, what I'm hoping for is a number of slots for those blade type SSDs. Four slots would be just about right. That would allow for Apple selling us 256GB in one slot, adding 256 in another with future expansion possible when the blades double in size. In the 15" four slots should be very doable.
There's a bullet on a plate sitting in front of Steve Jobs. He knows he's going to have to bite it sooner or later.
Something needs to happen.
Damn Intel. I thought the legal system would have put and end to their BundleGate of not only forcing bullsh*t GPUs to everyone but also blocking out Nvidia like that. If BundleGate is not monopolistic and anti-competitive, whatever, I don't know what is.
Intel should have recognized it's weakness and purchased NVidia. At least someone at AMD has a vision that drove them to purchase ATI. Further that vision seems to have a recognition that Somethings are better done on the GPU.
Thank goodness for Apple and ARM. We're going to see some fantastic stuff come out of that over the next 5 years.
Maybe. The problem is that ARM isn't a CPU performance powerhouse. It is great hardware for extremely portable devices but ARM has yet to deliver a processor that is suitable for a laptop. In any event I can hardly wait to see what Apples custom tablet processor will look like. It will be very interesting to see if it is a straight Cortex A9 implementation or if they customized the IP further.