Look At The Apple Next Generation Laptop
Five dueling scenarios
The rumor sphere has come up with five competing scenarios for the new Apple laptops:
- Apple may, as Short contends, switch to an Nevada chip set and keep the Intel processor.
- Apple may dump Intel entirely, and adopt an AMD processor and a chip set from AMD’s 2006 acquisition, ATL.
- Apple may stick with an Intel processor, but switch to an ATI chip set.
- Apple may stick with Intel for both processor and chipset, embarrassing all the rumormongers.
- Apple may stick with Intel processors, but design its own chipset, much as the company did in the pre-Intel days.
This brings us to the scenario in which Apple simply adopts Intel’s
CENTRINO 2 platform. After all, even though
CENTRINO 2 is no quantum leap over its predecessor, it does include notable improvements such as a faster front side bus and memory, low-power Ethernet, improved video performance with customizable color controls, theoretical Wi-Fi speeds of up to 450Mbps, plus optional or soon-to-be-released features such as an improved hybrid solid-state/hard-drive storage system, high-speed
WiMAX capabilities, hard-core enterprise-level management capabilities called v Pro, and the ability to switch between power-miserly integrated graphics and power-hungry dedicated graphics chips on the fly.
Steve Jobs has told the New York Times, “Basically [Open CL] lets you use graphics processors to do computation.” Software developers such as Adobe are already deep into Open CL investigation’ think accelerated Photoshop. To live up to OpenGL’s promise, Apple needs to supply its machines with potent CPUs (graphics processing units)—such as those from ATI or NVIDIA.
So will Apple stick with an Intel processor but adopt an AMD/ATI chipset? Nope. Can’t happen—at least today. For one thing, you can’t simply plug an Intel processor into a system that’s running an ATI chipset. As an Intel spokesperson told us, ATI chipsets are designed for AMD processors, which “have different architectures, pin-outs, and mechanical, electrical, and thermal characteristics.” What’s more, AMD’s mobile processors have memory controllers on-chip; Intel’s don’t. Finally, even if AMD wanted to make an Intel-compatible chipset, the company no longer has a license to produce chipsets based on Intel’s specs. That pretty well kills that scenario—unless AMD manages to regain an Intel license, at which point all bets are off.
So how about a fully AMD/ATI laptop, and goodbye to Intel? Not likely. AMD’s new Puma mobile platform is not getting good press; it’s power hungry and its Turion Ultra processor is no Core 2 Duo-beater. Intel may not be at the top of the graphics heap, but the company certainly knows how to make cool-running, powerful, power-sipping processors and chipsets. AMD’s processor and platform skills appear to be slipping.
And so we’re left with one final scenario: Apple sticks with an Intel processor, but switches to an NVIDIA chipset to improve Open CL and general graphics performance. Let’s run down NVIDIA’s advantages: Great graphics expertise? Check. A license to produce
Intel-compatible chipsets? Check.
An available,
top-notch chipset family? Check
MCP79 .High-speed chip-interconnect technology? Check
SLI. Good GPU power-management technology?
But there’s one final element of this puzzle that swings my vote to NVIDIA: it’s a hungry company. NVIDIA has had little success in the mobile market, despite a chipset that’s both Intel-compatible and closely matched, feature-by-feature, with CENTRINO 2. A hungry company cuts favorable deals with its partners—and Steve Jobs is one hell of a deal-cutter.
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