Filed under: Hardware, Macbook Pro, MacBook Air
New NVIDIA hardware capable of more than Apple lets on
We've already seen some suggestions that more is hiding under the hood of the new unibody MacBooks than Apple has disclosed. Now Gizmodo is reporting that the NVIDIA folks have revealed to them that the graphics hardware in the new MacBooks is capable of quite a bit more than Apple has has chosen to use.In particular, the the dual GPUs in the MacBook Pros can apparently be run in a Hybrid SLI mode allowing them both to be active at once (and thus increasing graphics performance over the discrete chip alone). In addition, the hardware is apparently capable of on-the-fly switching between the two GPUs instead of the present implementation which requires logging out to switch between the integrated 9400M and the discrete 9600M GT. In principle, this would allow the machine to dynamically switch between using the discrete chip when plugged in and the integrated chip when running on battery power.
So what's the upshot? In the short run, not much. Just because the features are supported in the silicon means squat unless Apple decides to implement them in software. In the best case scenario, however, the new MacBook Pros might see performance increases with only software and/or firmware updates. Of course, whether Apple will choose to do that (which would perhaps decrease the incentive to buy the next generation of machines) is another question altogether.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
oZ said 8:16AM on 10-23-2008
Didn't nvidia go on record stating the chipset that Apple was using did not support HybridSLI, a week ago or so? That in Windows, it's just stuck in discrete mode, and on OS X, it's switchable?
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Think Adrian said 8:22AM on 10-23-2008
SnowLeopard, here we come!
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EMoShunz said 8:44AM on 10-23-2008
i'm thinking the same thing. opencl w/ hybrid sli...fantastic!
Roberto said 8:24AM on 10-23-2008
The obvious solution is to reboot the BrickBook Pro in Windows XP mode, install the latest Geforce drivers and see what's possible or not.
And while you are in there, run Cyberlink's Bluray compatibility wizard and/or try to play a Bluray disc with an external USB Bluray drive.
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K said 8:47AM on 10-23-2008
My bet is this capacity-on-demand will evolve beginning in snow leopard. I see the switching of modes will first be manual and then be handled by the OS. It'll likely evolve as such:
1) changing modes by logging out/in, then
2) changing modes with a preference pane, then
3) changing modes as needed by the OS possibly with boundaries set by a preference pane
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Ian P said 8:54AM on 10-23-2008
There is already a sony laptop ( vaio cant remember which model) that has two cards in it that can run in sli mode and doesnt require rebooting to switch between modes (in vista)
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Ian P said 8:59AM on 10-23-2008
here is a link http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/macbook-pro-requires-logout-to-switch-graphics-modes/ confiming the vaio. If it is possible in windows it's not suprising that it will be available in osx eventually
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steve Jr said 9:26AM on 10-23-2008
PLEASE PLEASE do this apple, I can be patient and wait but don't make me spend another $2,000+ just to do the same features my machine is capable of
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john said 9:56AM on 10-23-2008
Steve Jr, you beg as though Apple listens to their customers. I guess it doesn't hurt, though. PRETTY PLEASE Apple?
Christopher Price said 10:04AM on 10-23-2008
Apple won't get the message unless savvy customers hold off on buying. I am quite happy with my current MacBook Pro, but Hybrid SLI mode would have me reconsidering...
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Gnomad said 10:26AM on 10-23-2008
When Nvidia says the chipset supports "on-the-fly" switching, they mean they can do it without having to restart the entire graphics system. That's why you don't need to *power* *cycle* the new MBPs to change video chips.
I am certain that Apple is planning to implement transparent chipset switching and hybrid SLI, but they are not going to announce that until the drivers are stable. In typical Apple fashion, you'll hear about it when Apple *releases* it!
Remember, this is a brand new chipset and Apple has put a product on the street before Nvidia even announced the chipset. I remember the days when I used Windoze and there were updates to the graphics drivers at least once a month. Sure, I could use all the new features of the new card -- but only for a few hours before some bug in the drivers crashed the machine. It was often many months of struggling with buggy drivers and system crashes before the machine was actually usable.
Now, here is where things get *really* interesting. Y'all know that Snow Leopard is just around the corner, right? If so, maybe you've heard the reports about the "lack of features" in Snow Leopard. The big deal with Snow Leopard is what's under the hood. Full support of the 64-bit architecture. Improved support for multi-core processors ("Grand Central"). And most interestingly, OpenCL, where GPU processing power is made available to applications.
I would not at all be surprised to see not just true on-the-fly video switching and hybrid SLI on the MBPs under Snow Leopard, but the transparent sharing of GPU processor power. For example, say you are running a computationally intensive app that doesn't require any fancy graphics. The system could use the integrated 9400 chipset for display, and then dedicate all of the 9600's compute power to the app. When you think about the architecture of the 9400/9600 architecture in this light, it makes a *lot* more sense.
Given that today's GPU engines have as much raw power (if "power" can be defined by the number of transistors) as the CPU, so theoretically Apple may be able to effectively *double* the speed of some applications on the MBP when Snow Leopard comes out.
Come on, people, you just know that all the unused power of the GPU in today's MBPs has been driving Uncle Steve crazy. And Steve is fussy about his "product tiers." Why would the entry level MacBook get the same aluminium unibody treatment as the flagship laptop if there were not to be something else major to differentiate them? The only major difference now (aside from firewire and LCD quality) is, you guessed it, the secondary GPU.
-g.
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Hade said 10:21AM on 10-23-2008
Apple has been known to somewhat artificially create small differences between very similar products, and then use those as justification for rather large price gaps. I think that trend has reached its extreme with the current line-up of aluminium MacBook (Pro)s
However, contrary to what this article seems to suggest, I don 't believe Apple would willingly prevent Mac owners from using the full capabilities of any product they bought, unless the software to make it work were not available (yet). So I guess this must be something that will be made possible eventually, on the current generation of hardware, even though it might be used as one of the selling points for Snow Leopard. And I 'm cool with that.
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Cowfodder said 1:16PM on 10-23-2008
"However, contrary to what this article seems to suggest, I don 't believe Apple would willingly prevent Mac owners from using the full capabilities of any product they bought"
Really? Then why does the ATI Radeon x1600 in my White iMac only run at half or less the processor and ram clock that it runs on other machines?
Apple has purposely forced graphics chipsets to run at lower speeds in the past just so the machine could run silently. Personally, I'd like a choice, and some sort of overclocking software would be great, but I doubt it will ever happen.
Object-X said 10:23AM on 10-23-2008
I don't understand this post's parenthetical comment "(which would perhaps decrease the incentive to buy the next generation of machines)".
Why would Apple enabling SLI mode on the MacBook Pro decrease the incentive to buy it?
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Jon said 10:59AM on 10-23-2008
I think they mean the NEXT generation that isn't out yet.
MichaelB said 10:50AM on 10-23-2008
This reminds me of those who adopted the first Macbook and Macbook Pro's with 802.11n and didnt know it, only to have to pay a fee to enable the capability. Would we again have to pay to enable the technology that is already present, just not working to its full potential?
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Cedric said 11:27AM on 10-23-2008
As stated above, obviously Apple is switching "on-the-fly", since it doesn't require a reboot. The logout issue more likely has to do with the WindowServer daemon not yet being able to handle the switch on the fly.
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Craig said 10:59AM on 10-23-2008
He's not referring to the MBPs that were just released, but a future revision that is an eventuality (they'll upgrade even the newly released MBPs eventually). If they could add Hybrid SLI via only firmware/software/drivers and were planning it as a selling point of new hardware, it would decrease incentive for the new machine.
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Brad said 4:31PM on 10-23-2008
I have to agree, all those features sound like they fit in exactly with what Apple is attempting to do with Snow Leopard, and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw support for them come OS X 10.6
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smoke_tetsu said 3:05PM on 10-23-2008
The one thing about hybrid SLI that didn't sound good to me when I heard about it before is the fastest card – or the card with more memory - will run at the speed of the slower card or disable its additional memory. That's amongst other caveats. Switching the cards on the fly or using one of them for OpenCL sound more like the features to be excited about.
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