NVIDIA May Withdraw From Integrated Graphics Chipset Market

NVIDIA may abandon the integrated graphics chipset market due to ongoing legal struggles with Intel. Intel claims that NVIDIA is not licensed to make chipsets that work with Intel’s newest processor architectures; NVIDIA claims its current license is valid for all Intel architectures.

What does this mean for Mac users? Currently two NVIDIA integrated graphics chipsets, the GeForce 9400M and GeForce 9600M GT, are used in various Macs, including the MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, and iMac. NVIDIA’s withdrawal from the chipset market wouldn’t directly impact the current line of Mac products, because NVIDIA will continue to manufacture and support these products. But since NVIDIA has stated it will stop future development of the integrated products, any future Macs that use on-board graphics chipsets will have to look to ATI, Intel, or even Apple for graphics chips.

This brings us to recent rumors about new iMacs and Mac minis. What graphics processor will these Macs use? While Apple could continue to use the existing GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT, we were hoping for new graphics options, with even more oomph. In a recent poll, About: Macs readers listed “New graphics options: More choices, including graphics processors that work with OpenCL.” as one of their top choices for new Macs. (By the way, you can still vote in the Build Your Own New iMac poll.)

Apple could return to Intel-based integrated graphics, but unless Intel has made drastic strides in its integrated graphics designs, this would mean a return to the ho-hum Intel embedded graphics used in older iMacs and MacBooks. That leaves existing NVIDIA GeForce graphics processors, ATI-based solutions, or Apple-based solutions. Or perhaps, something more interesting, such as Apple abandoning integrated graphics altogether, or perhaps buying NVIDIA and using the company’s expertise for all future Apple graphics needs. Do you think Apple and Intel would be able to come to a licensing agreement? I think so, and probably faster than Intel and NVIDIA separately ever could.