Stefan Mileschin

The writing appears to be on the wall for Apple's relationship with Nvidia.

Apple began using Nvidia for its latest all-in-one, which started shipping late last month, but there are signs that all is not well with the relationship. Job adverts have started to appear which suggest that Apple could be looking to switch its graphics cards supplier from Nvidia back to AMD for the iMac.

Apple wants for Hardware Systems Electrical Engineers with experience in AMD graphics processing units (GPU).

There is no real reason why Apple would be doing this if there was not a fair bit of work to do.

The job ad is for electrical engineers to work on "electrical and system design integration of the Mac Desktop computer system". Key qualifications include experience in Intel chipsets, power management, and "AMD and/or Nvidia GPUs."

True the experience in Nvidia GPUs is also a requirement, but that might be simply to have a person on hand who knows the differences between the two systems.

Apple uses Nvidia on the latest iMac, while its Mac mini uses integrated graphics from Intel, and its Mac Pro uses ATI.

The move back to AMD would seem a little odd given the fact that Apple liked Nvidia GPUs because it promised to deliver "up to 60 percent faster graphics" performance.

It might be that Apple is going to offer AMD chips as an alternative to Nvidia, but that flies in the face of Apple's policy of making choices for its users rather than them "thinking different".

http://news.techeye.net/chips/apple-...idia-for-imacs