Apple May Have Cut Kepler GPUs From Some New MacBooks

By Douglas Perry
published

There is an interesting rumor that is likely to cause some meetings between Apple and Nvidia.

A story first reported by SemiAccurate, and later picked up by Apple Insider, suggests that Apple has little confidence in Nvidia that it can supply enough 28 nm Kepler graphics chips to support Apple's demand. Apple apparently has already made the decision to dump Nvidia for "a large number" of notebooks and may only use Kepler in a limited way, potentially only for the high-end. Given the fact that Apple sells about 3.6 million notebooks per quarter, this may - if the rumor is true - hurt Nvidia.

The rumor further suggests that Apple now intends the graphics capability in its notebooks mainly via Intel's Ivy Bridge processors, which somehow fits to the rumor that Intel has delayed the introduction of Ivy Bridge due to a large order from Apple that may be connected with the Kepler supply issue.

While all of this information is unconfirmed and neither Apple nor Nvidia will comment on it, we know that Apple is paranoid about eliminating all variables its component supply and make sure that it has enough parts to ship all the products it can. If Nvidia cannot satisfy Apple's demand of potentially several million graphics chips per quarter, it is reasonable to assume that Apple would dump the company in this round.

Douglas Perry
40 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Lord Captivus
    Its good for every industry that companies have more than one supplier of "the same thing".
    Having a more even cake distribution ussualy means more effort on suppliers to make their products better.
    Reply
  • LuckyDucky7
    That's too bad... but since when did Apple care about performance?

    It's also strange (to me) that Intel would delay Ivy Bridge because of Apple; because Intel would have known beforehand that Apple would want processors- and they'd need the same number anyways even with a Keplar GPU.
    Reply
  • scook9
    Couldn't possibly have anything to do with Tegra 3 and all the devices it powers that compete with Apple directly......
    Reply
  • olaf
    OMG you won't be able to play on Apple laptops ... oh wait nothing new there :P

    ps: i know there are exceptions so don't start quoting the few rare titles out there :P don't care now , tomorrow or ever about it :) PC's > apple in gaming :P
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    First AMD is dumped, now Nividia might get dumped. Intel is going to be so happy.
    Reply
  • I have a toshiba with Intel intigrated graphics, fat chance getting updated opengl drivers through intel, as they let toshiba write custom opengl drivers and Toshiba will only upgrade these openGL drivers when hell freezes over!!! Intel if you create a graphics chip you should update the drivers like AMD or Nvidia and never let the OEM write the graphics drivers for Intel HDgraphics!!!
    Reply
  • obsama1
    Just use the new AMD GPUs. Cheaper and (probably) faster than Kepler, but we'll have to wait and see.
    Reply
  • Tab54o
    I'm not even sure why macs need any video cards.
    Reply
  • LuckyDucky nailed it. This would not require a single extra Ivy Bridge CPU than it otherwise would have, the onboard graphics were coming with it regardless of whether they were being used or not. If I had to guess, Intel just requested that the media spin it that way, in the same manner that Intel delays are never really delays... Not that Intel has complete and total control of the tech media.
    Reply
  • balister
    Even if the rumor isn't about supply problems, it's just another way for Apple to make more profit per machine.
    Reply