We live in interesting times will Apple stick with Nvidia and the follow on to the 9400M
The next iteration of the Nvidia ION chipset is believed to have double the amount of shaders seen in the current Geforce 9400M /MCP79/ION GPU according to Fudzilla. Nvidia ION has 16 shaders whilst ION 2 will have more than 32. The result will be much more powerful graphics.
Or Will the go out on their own via PowerVR SGX 543MP
The POWERVR SGX543MP family enables up to sixteen cores of POWERVR SGX543 programmable GP-GPU logic to be integrated in a high performance, multi-processor graphics solution without performance or silicon area compromises. Taking the already high-performance four-pipe POWERVR SGX543, and then scaling that performance up to between eight and 64 pipelines, POWERVR SGX543MP delivers performance comparable to many desktops, laptops and games consoles.
At 200MHz core frequency an SGX543MP4 (four cores) will deliver 133 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 4Gpixels/sec**. Higher frequencies or a larger number of cores each deliver more performance. At 400MHz core frequency an SGX543MP8 (eight cores) will deliver 532 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 16Gpixels/sec.
I just want to say that when I use Safari and I scroll with my Oct 2009 Unibody MBP15 it's just not as smooth as my 5 year old machine. Things are not redrawing and rendering that well. Go into any Apple store open safari and scroll. You will see strange redraw effects - it sucks.
The Larrabee currently only has 32 cores though, same as the 9600M GT, so while it finally competes with the MBP for OpenCL, it doesn't come close to the desktop power NVIDIA has in the 249 cores in the GTX 280 or the 128 cores in the 8800 GT.
That is like comparing Apple to Orange. If core number means anything, Even Mid Range ATI has 320 "core". Not to mention GTX280 and 8800GT are Desktop Class. Apple mainly use Notebook Graphics.
Quote:
Intel is planning ondie Larrabee cores
In Long term; 3 - 4 years, Yes. In Short term, it merely means those Larrabee instruction will be avaible inside the CPU. Some of them will make appearance inside Sandy Bridge. Which is at least a year away.
Quote:
There won't be a follow-up to 9400M because Intel has integrated the memory controller with the CPU, which means it's no longer possible to produce a decent performing integrated GPU unless you are Intel. nVidia will have to focus on low-cost discrete GPUs in the post-Nehalem world.
I guess the liscense problem isn't as large as some media has make it out to be. As Wizard has point out DMI will never work for IGFX anyway. Nvidia will be relying on an 8x PCI-Express. The mGPU today wont be much different to todays mGPU. GPU are not latancy sensitive either therefore memory controller sitting inside CPU should have a small performance impact.
Quote:
Juicy!
Wouldn't it be interesting if Apple dumped Intel and announced a surprise marriage with AMD? Maybe in an alternate reality . . .
Actually, i have always wonder of the Possibly of Triple As. ( Apple, ATI , AMD, ) or Even Quad As ( with ARM ). Apple could buy 50% of AMD fairly cheap half a year ago. But i guess the time has come and gone.
I am waiting for Snow Leopard to come pre-installed on MBP 17... Supposedly this is gonna happen in September 2009, 2 months or so from now?
All this confusion about GPU's, and I am wondering if it's safe to buy MBP 17' anytime soon? Why? I don't want problems, and having to return my MBP 17' for repairs! I've been through that, and it's not a good feeling, even though Apple Care was outstanding!
It's upsetting to see that Apple allowed a faulty hardware inside Macs, and now it's blame game, while the customers are caught in between! People who read this Forum area minority, compared to the Average Joe The Consumer who doesn't know about this kind of stuff!
I just want want a trustworthy hardware, in addition to software, of course! I don't want to beta test hardware, never mind software!
It would be great to see Apple not have to depend on any other vendor, but I'm not familiar with that kind of politics...
AMD is a logical substitute, but I wonder if there is something more to Apple's increased investment in Imagination.
Apple should just complete the purchase of Imagination out-right (along with Intel's shares) and let them run as a subsidiary like Filemaker.
I doubt that anything Imagination has currently would be adequate for the Macs though.
The PA Semi group Apple bought was unlikely for graphic chips. Most likely they are working on an ARM based processor for the next generation iPhone as rumored here.
you know, the licensing issue lends credibility that nVidia is developing its own x64 mobile processor. Arstechnica reported on that some time ago.
I wonder why an old issue unrelated to the current line of products, which are selling fast and have great performance, would cause nVidia to burn bridges with Apple... doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. The warrant of a "punishment" for a few years after coming out with 2 stellar products (9400m and 9600m) doesn't seem deserved.
this is a big problem with Intel. The combo of their drivers and hardware just doesn't inspire faith that the new stuff will be better.
On top of that I'm not convinced that Larabee is all it is cracked up to be. Time will tell here also but the types of things GPUs are being used for now for acceleration don't need or want general purpose compute units. If you need general purpose acceleration add more cores in your CPU. GPUs need to be optimized for what they do best or most frequently to keep power usage down.
Dave
Yes Intel's GPU drivers have sucked but Larrabee is different in that it's programmed like a x86 processor. Maybe Intel will actually be able to leverage their expertise in this avenue. I don't expect Larrabee to be a game changer but I hope it's at least competitive.
That would be a GIANT step backwards. Finally decent graphics, don't ever go back to Intel. ATI would be fine. I hope to see Apple go away from Intel CPUs, too.
Yes, Apple and Nvidia may be going through some difficulties about defective graphic cards. However there is no doubt in my mind that Intel is pushing Apple to drop Nvidia.
Intel is like Microsoft. Neither likes competition, nor welcome fair play. If Nvidia had not developed a formidable competitor, Intel wouldn't care. But when Nvidia took part of Intel's market, the fight was on. And the way it is shaping up, the consumers will be the losers. If Intel succeeds in court, Nvidia will be served a cease and desist notice, Intel will crawl back to their slow innovation, and Mac systems will become stagnant to only what Intel can dish out to Apple. To hell with that idea.
I think Intel and Microsoft kept us stuck on 32 bit systems for far too many years. Intel is even more of a monopoly since macs use their products.
I hope Apple ditches nVidia. I've had a Dell 1330M noteboook with nVidia 8400GS go poof. Dell had to extend it's warranty by a year because they knew nVidia's chips were bad. Dell sent someone and fixed it without too much incident, but still it was inconvenient, and who knows how long the new motherboard will last.
Seems like all nVidia notebooks have a high failure rate because of the nVidia GPU. Also, I have the last 2.4GHz Intel white MacBook. It's quiet except when the fans go off. But I helped my friend with her newer slower GHz nVidia White MacBook (2.0GHz I think?) and it emitted a high-pitched whine. It was identical to the high-pitched whine my Dell 1330M with nVidia had (I say "had" because the high pitched whine/squeal annoyed me so much, I gave it to my dad who can't hear the whine). I can only attribute this annoying sound to the nVidia graphics. I will never buy a notebook that emits random, annoying, high-pitched frequencies, or any notebook with nVidia graphics cards for a long time, unless nVidia can prove that they've resolved their issues.
And not to start a flame war, but seriously, does anyone really care all that much about high-performance graphics on a Mac??? My Intel MacBook with Intel integrated graphics works perfectly fine for me. Plays HDTV fine with Elgato software. If I want to play 3D games, I'll kick back on the sofa with my game consoles.
...seriously, does anyone really care all that much about high-performance graphics on a Mac?
Traditionally, strong graphics options have been the reason to use a Mac. Though the reasons are constantly increasing for the average user, those in graphics-oriented professions have been loyal Mac customers for decades now, and they buy high-end equipment. For example, the photographer that my family goes to uses two Mac Pros, two iMacs, and a 17" MacBook Pro. And his wife has a MacBook, too. He's just a photographer! There are thousands of people like him out there that happily pay Apple a lot of money for their equipment. I really doubt Apple wants them to stop buying from them; it's still a strong source of revenue.
This was going to happen anyways given that Nvidia and Intel have been fighting over the Nehalem chipset issue and it doesn't look like Nvidia will be able to make compatible chipsets.
Regardless, all future iMacs and Macbook Pros based on Nehalem (Clarksfield 4-core/Arrandale 2-core) should have a low-power (40nm) discrete GPUs. I find it offensive that the basic configuration iMac uses the integrated Nvidia 9400 iGPU, regardless of how much better it is than Intel's integrated graphics.
Similarly, future Nehalem Macbook Pros will no doubt have low-power ATI discrete GPUs, like the 40nm mobile versions of their highly successful 4800 series. In all likelihood the Macbook Pro will use the 32nm dual-core "Arrandale" Nehalem-based chips that have an integrated graphics die on the CPU package. It will be cool if Apple figures out how to use the switchable graphics technology between manufacturers, so that you can run the integrated Intel chipset included on the CPU when you don't need the power of the higher performing discrete card.
Guaranteed to fail! Is this true that the MacBook Pro 15 and 17 inch have nVidia chips that are GUARANTEED TO FAIL!?!?!?! I don't want a 3-year replacement promise. I want a new laptop!!! With my luck, it'll fail right in the middle of an important meeting!!!!!
This story doesn't make any sense from the 'spat' storyline. The licensing issues between Intel and nVidia are a big deal, but I think the only bridges that have burned here are SemiAccurate's.
They have Intel, AMD and Nvidia right now at their disposal.
Everyone would be best of saying ATI instead of AMD (I know that AMD owns ATI), but AMDs CPUs certainly aren't worth sh!t. And ATI still trades as ATI. Avoids silly confusion.
I agree, The steve is back just this week, and here is news of Apple taking a fixed and defined position. It smacks of SJ, and good on him. He is saying, deliver what we pay for, or go and whistle, don't f**k with me (Apple Inc).
Apple can move very fast when the Steve say so. Welcome back Steve, and good health to you.
Comments
The next iteration of the Nvidia ION chipset is believed to have double the amount of shaders seen in the current Geforce 9400M /MCP79/ION GPU according to Fudzilla. Nvidia ION has 16 shaders whilst ION 2 will have more than 32. The result will be much more powerful graphics.
Or Will the go out on their own via PowerVR SGX 543MP
The POWERVR SGX543MP family enables up to sixteen cores of POWERVR SGX543 programmable GP-GPU logic to be integrated in a high performance, multi-processor graphics solution without performance or silicon area compromises. Taking the already high-performance four-pipe POWERVR SGX543, and then scaling that performance up to between eight and 64 pipelines, POWERVR SGX543MP delivers performance comparable to many desktops, laptops and games consoles.
At 200MHz core frequency an SGX543MP4 (four cores) will deliver 133 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 4Gpixels/sec**. Higher frequencies or a larger number of cores each deliver more performance. At 400MHz core frequency an SGX543MP8 (eight cores) will deliver 532 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 16Gpixels/sec.
The Larrabee currently only has 32 cores though, same as the 9600M GT, so while it finally competes with the MBP for OpenCL, it doesn't come close to the desktop power NVIDIA has in the 249 cores in the GTX 280 or the 128 cores in the 8800 GT.
That is like comparing Apple to Orange. If core number means anything, Even Mid Range ATI has 320 "core". Not to mention GTX280 and 8800GT are Desktop Class. Apple mainly use Notebook Graphics.
Intel is planning ondie Larrabee cores
In Long term; 3 - 4 years, Yes. In Short term, it merely means those Larrabee instruction will be avaible inside the CPU. Some of them will make appearance inside Sandy Bridge. Which is at least a year away.
There won't be a follow-up to 9400M because Intel has integrated the memory controller with the CPU, which means it's no longer possible to produce a decent performing integrated GPU unless you are Intel. nVidia will have to focus on low-cost discrete GPUs in the post-Nehalem world.
I guess the liscense problem isn't as large as some media has make it out to be. As Wizard has point out DMI will never work for IGFX anyway. Nvidia will be relying on an 8x PCI-Express. The mGPU today wont be much different to todays mGPU. GPU are not latancy sensitive either therefore memory controller sitting inside CPU should have a small performance impact.
Juicy!
Wouldn't it be interesting if Apple dumped Intel and announced a surprise marriage with AMD? Maybe in an alternate reality . . .
Actually, i have always wonder of the Possibly of Triple As. ( Apple, ATI , AMD, ) or Even Quad As ( with ARM ). Apple could buy 50% of AMD fairly cheap half a year ago. But i guess the time has come and gone.
All this confusion about GPU's, and I am wondering if it's safe to buy MBP 17' anytime soon? Why? I don't want problems, and having to return my MBP 17' for repairs! I've been through that, and it's not a good feeling, even though Apple Care was outstanding!
It's upsetting to see that Apple allowed a faulty hardware inside Macs, and now it's blame game, while the customers are caught in between! People who read this Forum area minority, compared to the Average Joe The Consumer who doesn't know about this kind of stuff!
I just want want a trustworthy hardware, in addition to software, of course! I don't want to beta test hardware, never mind software!
It would be great to see Apple not have to depend on any other vendor, but I'm not familiar with that kind of politics...
AMD is a logical substitute, but I wonder if there is something more to Apple's increased investment in Imagination.
Apple should just complete the purchase of Imagination out-right (along with Intel's shares) and let them run as a subsidiary like Filemaker.
I doubt that anything Imagination has currently would be adequate for the Macs though.
The PA Semi group Apple bought was unlikely for graphic chips. Most likely they are working on an ARM based processor for the next generation iPhone as rumored here.
I wonder why an old issue unrelated to the current line of products, which are selling fast and have great performance, would cause nVidia to burn bridges with Apple... doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. The warrant of a "punishment" for a few years after coming out with 2 stellar products (9400m and 9600m) doesn't seem deserved.
this is a big problem with Intel. The combo of their drivers and hardware just doesn't inspire faith that the new stuff will be better.
On top of that I'm not convinced that Larabee is all it is cracked up to be. Time will tell here also but the types of things GPUs are being used for now for acceleration don't need or want general purpose compute units. If you need general purpose acceleration add more cores in your CPU. GPUs need to be optimized for what they do best or most frequently to keep power usage down.
Dave
Yes Intel's GPU drivers have sucked but Larrabee is different in that it's programmed like a x86 processor. Maybe Intel will actually be able to leverage their expertise in this avenue. I don't expect Larrabee to be a game changer but I hope it's at least competitive.
Yes, Apple and Nvidia may be going through some difficulties about defective graphic cards. However there is no doubt in my mind that Intel is pushing Apple to drop Nvidia.
Intel is like Microsoft. Neither likes competition, nor welcome fair play. If Nvidia had not developed a formidable competitor, Intel wouldn't care. But when Nvidia took part of Intel's market, the fight was on. And the way it is shaping up, the consumers will be the losers. If Intel succeeds in court, Nvidia will be served a cease and desist notice, Intel will crawl back to their slow innovation, and Mac systems will become stagnant to only what Intel can dish out to Apple. To hell with that idea.
I think Intel and Microsoft kept us stuck on 32 bit systems for far too many years. Intel is even more of a monopoly since macs use their products.
Well lets hope this doesn't mean a return to Intel's horrible integrated graphics.
The whole point of Arrandale's design is to force just such a thing.
Seems like all nVidia notebooks have a high failure rate because of the nVidia GPU. Also, I have the last 2.4GHz Intel white MacBook. It's quiet except when the fans go off. But I helped my friend with her newer slower GHz nVidia White MacBook (2.0GHz I think?) and it emitted a high-pitched whine. It was identical to the high-pitched whine my Dell 1330M with nVidia had (I say "had" because the high pitched whine/squeal annoyed me so much, I gave it to my dad who can't hear the whine). I can only attribute this annoying sound to the nVidia graphics. I will never buy a notebook that emits random, annoying, high-pitched frequencies, or any notebook with nVidia graphics cards for a long time, unless nVidia can prove that they've resolved their issues.
And not to start a flame war, but seriously, does anyone really care all that much about high-performance graphics on a Mac??? My Intel MacBook with Intel integrated graphics works perfectly fine for me. Plays HDTV fine with Elgato software. If I want to play 3D games, I'll kick back on the sofa with my game consoles.
Just remove the optical drive and the 13? MBPs will room for a discrete GPU? and then some.
That's an interesting point - particularly because even SL could now be installed from an SD card.
...seriously, does anyone really care all that much about high-performance graphics on a Mac?
Traditionally, strong graphics options have been the reason to use a Mac. Though the reasons are constantly increasing for the average user, those in graphics-oriented professions have been loyal Mac customers for decades now, and they buy high-end equipment. For example, the photographer that my family goes to uses two Mac Pros, two iMacs, and a 17" MacBook Pro. And his wife has a MacBook, too. He's just a photographer! There are thousands of people like him out there that happily pay Apple a lot of money for their equipment. I really doubt Apple wants them to stop buying from them; it's still a strong source of revenue.
Regardless, all future iMacs and Macbook Pros based on Nehalem (Clarksfield 4-core/Arrandale 2-core) should have a low-power (40nm) discrete GPUs. I find it offensive that the basic configuration iMac uses the integrated Nvidia 9400 iGPU, regardless of how much better it is than Intel's integrated graphics.
Similarly, future Nehalem Macbook Pros will no doubt have low-power ATI discrete GPUs, like the 40nm mobile versions of their highly successful 4800 series. In all likelihood the Macbook Pro will use the 32nm dual-core "Arrandale" Nehalem-based chips that have an integrated graphics die on the CPU package. It will be cool if Apple figures out how to use the switchable graphics technology between manufacturers, so that you can run the integrated Intel chipset included on the CPU when you don't need the power of the higher performing discrete card.
The whole point of Arrandale's design is to force just such a thing.
From the Rumors Mills, and Intel investment, it seems Arrandale's graphics wont be based on previous Intel GFX. It will be based on PowerVR SGX..
They have Intel, AMD and Nvidia right now at their disposal.
Everyone would be best of saying ATI instead of AMD (I know that AMD owns ATI), but AMDs CPUs certainly aren't worth sh!t. And ATI still trades as ATI. Avoids silly confusion.
The stupid Nvidia PowerMizer makes the OS X eyecandy jerky anyway.
Don't mess with The Jobs.
I agree, The steve is back just this week, and here is news of Apple taking a fixed and defined position. It smacks of SJ, and good on him. He is saying, deliver what we pay for, or go and whistle, don't f**k with me (Apple Inc).
Apple can move very fast when the Steve say so. Welcome back Steve, and good health to you.