Apple won't use the Calpella and the Arrandale in its MacBooks

Dec 7, 2009 10:47 GMT  ·  By

Apple has always seen to its own devices and, each time it came up with some new Mac, it used, in its creation, only those technologies that were in line with its intentions. The Arrandale CPU with integrated graphics circuits, which Intel will showcase at CES 2010, seems to be especially out of line with Apple's plans, as the company, according to bsn sources, allegedly refuses to use it in its upcoming MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac mini lines.

Apple seems to be the only company that refuses the new technology. NVIDIA's DirectX 10.1 40-nm based hardware saw a high popularity among OEMs interested in Hybrid Graphics modes. This allowed NVIDIA to score an impressive 80% Calpella design wins and the respective OEMs saw increased hardware support for the new platform, increasing the Calpella's overall popularity.

Intel has been working for quite a while on its central processing unit with integrated graphics and the first sample of such a product, the aforementioned Intel Arrandale, will debut at CES 2010, just a few weeks from now. The processor will be a combination of a 32nm process-based dual-core and a 45nm-based iGFX Fusion graphics, which is set to be used with the sixth-generation Centrino platform known as Calpella. Apple reportedly has no intention of switching to a new Mac design based on integrated graphics, and will only agree to use the new technology from Intel if the latter comes up with a Calpella setup free of integrated graphics circuits.

This development comes at a particular time after NVIDIA was forced to halt its chipset development because of litigations with Intel. This occurred right after Apple had transitioned from Intel to NVIDIA chipsets, enabling a performance increase for the integrated graphics circuits of the latest MacBook and MacBook Pro product lines. Arrandale will supposedly have much better graphics capabilities than previous offers, but Apple still wants graphics-free CPUs, even though it should still be able to include discrete graphics solutions alongside the new processor.

Intel and Apple were known to collaborate on custom chip designs in the past and, in this case, it seems that a similar collaboration is mandatory if Intel wants to see its new processor inside Apple's next line of Macs.