applechipmunks

The relationship between Apple and NVIDIA, the manufacturer of the graphics chips in most Macs for quite some time now, appears to be souring at an exponential rate. Electronista reports that negotiations between the two companies to continue their business relationship are not going well, with Apple accusing NVIDIA of being arrogant. According to a source with access to NVIDIA, Apple is on track to cut NVIDIA off as a graphics chip provider for the next 3-4 years.

If the two companies cannot reach an agreement, NVIDIA would continue to provide chips for models that currently use NVIDIA, but Apple would be likely to drop NVIDIA chipsets in updates to their product line, particularly in iMacs and MacBooks currently based on Intel’s Nehalem architecture.

A significant factor in the disagreement is the way NVIDIA handled the graphics failures of MacBook Pros carrying the GeForce 8600M video chipset, which had a tendency to overheat and eventually stop working. Apple had to extend the warranty on MBP graphics chips sold from June 2007 to October 2008 to three years (the Apple support page on this issue can be found here).

The relationship between Intel and NVIDIA hasn’t exactly helped, either. Both businesses filed opposing lawsuits over NVIDIA’s license to make mainboard chipsets with their own internal memory controllers. If Intel wins, NVIDIA could not make another chipset like its GeForce 9400M model that supports Core i7 processors, and would oust NVIDIA from Macs by exclusion.

Neither Apple nor NVIDIA have publicly spoken on the matter so far. Apple does have a history of severing relationships almost without warning, as they dropped ATI (now AMD) from Power Mac G4s after the company revealed Apple’s plans ahead of a Macworld keynote address. However, if Apple does indeed drop NVIDIA, they may have to return to AMD in order to maintain their current graphics standard or Build its own. Well Apple somehow seems to be exploring that option too. Here is how.

New Hires. Apple has been hiring AMD/ATI CTO-level execs over the past year. Bob Drebinand Raja Koduri are the most notable.

Bob Drebin was the chief technology officer of the Graphics Products Group within AMD. In this role, he oversaw the technical strategy and direction for AMD’s graphics related businesses.

Mr. Drebin joined AMD with the ATI acquisition in 2006. At ATI, Mr. Drebin led the architecture and design of many of ATI award-winning graphics processors. Before ATI, Mr. Drebin managed the architecture and design unit of ArtX, where he was instrumental in development of the graphics component for the Nintendo Game Cube. Prior to joining ArtX, Mr. Drebin was a chief engineer in Silicon Graphics’ Advanced Graphics Division, where he spent nine years developing high performance graphics systems.

Their new boss?  Mark Papermaster, a guy with chip knowledge so important to IBM that they sued Apple to prevent him from joining.

PA Semi.  The official word on this group acquired by Apple is that they are building next gen iPhone processors…and they probably are.  But their expertise could also be used in building graphics processors.

There is always the PowerVR angle to think about as well.  Apple owns about 10% of the mobile GPU designer (and Intel owns 15%) so it will be interesting to see where all of these puzzle pieces fit.

OpenCL. Apple is spearheading the move to this GPU-as-processor architecture.  As a founding member of the Khronos group, Apple will be in a position to run with this technology when Snow Leopard hits the streets in September.

While initially developing OpenCL, it became clear to Apple that the technology offered an opportunity for the industry to work together to define a standard for parallel programming. With the support of AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA, Apple proposed OpenCL to the Khronos Group consortium as the basis for a new standard. Demonstrating the strength of the proposal, OpenCL was expanded to include digital signal processors (DSPs) and other specialized processor architectures. It was ratified as an open, royalty-free open standard in December 2008.

Stranger things have happened.