The latest MacBooks (including the Pro and the new Airs) have been understandably criticized for their anachronistic adherence to Intel’s last-gen Core 2 Duo CPU when competing notebooks have all moved on to the superior Arrandale architecture.
There’s a good reason for that, though: a lawsuit between Intel and GPU maker NVIDIA that prevents the latter company from making chipsets for current-gen Intel CPUs that include an NVIDIA memory controller. That lawsuit may be on the cusp of being resolved.
Since Apple’s MacBook line of notebooks depends on the graphics boost provided by their integrated NVIDIA integrated graphics, they have not been able to upgrade their machines to use Intel’s latest Core series of CPUs without giving up the MacBook line’s NVIDIA-assisted shot-in-the-arm.
To switch to Arrandale, Apple would have to embrace Intel’s own, inferior integrated GPU architecture, which would lead to a performance hit when it comes to OS X’s graphics-heavy user interface.
The good news is that it looks like Intel and NVIDIA may be close to a resolution of their lawsuit. Both companies have canceled their court dates, causing some investors to speculate that the thread of AMD’s upcoming Fusion processors — which features robust integration with AMD’s own ATI Radeon GPU technology — might have sparked Intel to get back into bed with NVIDIA.
I imagine Cupertino’s pressure on both companies to work something out can’t have counted for nothing, either: Apple could not afford the credibility hit of letting another generation of MacBooks pass without upgrading their CPU architecture to silicon more contemporary.
[via Ars]
