Those claiming to be inside the discussions have told SemiAccurate, the new project of a previous Inquirer editor who supposedly sources inside Nvidia, that Apple may not agree to another such deal for 3-4 years as a result of the heated words. AppleInsider says it wouldn't result in an immediate exit, as the recentness of implementing Nvidia chipsets into nearly all Macs means some models will keep their existing designs for a long time, but could already result in some comparatively near-term updates shedding the Nvidia platform. These would probably start with iMacs and MacBooks based on Intel's Nehalem processor architecture, "but would get progressively wider as time goes on," the article adds.

Of course, Nvidia and Intel are currently involved in a court battle to decide whether Nvidia has the right to use Intel's latest processor interconnect technology in its chipsets. Intel says no, Nvidia disagrees, of course.

In other words, if Apple wants to offers Macs based on Intel's Core i3, i5 and/or i7 desktop processors and their mobile equivalents, it needs a chipset supplier who can support said CPUs. Depending on how the court cases go, Nvidia may not be able to say its chips can.

As noted by The Register, Apple has benefited from Nvidia's technology. "The integrated GeForce 9400M chipset it uses in all of its laptops and consumer desktops has given those boxes a much needed graphical performance boost," the article adds. "If the company does say adios to Nvidia, it will need to be sure Intel can offer a rather better alternative."

On the other hand 9to5Mac speculates that Apple might be building its own GPUs (graphic processing units). The site thinks that this might be possible because: 1) Apple has been hiring hiring AMD/ATI CTO-level execs over the past year, 2) Apple bought PA Semi (a a boutique microprocessor design company ), and 3) Apple is "spearheading" the move to OpenCL, a "GPU-as-processor architecture."


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