New NVIDIA hardware capable of more than Apple lets on

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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...

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