So, Intel is reiterating to PC makers that the Atom processor only comes bundled with their own chipsets and is refusing to validate Nvidia's chipset for Atom-based netbooks. Which is obviously a problem for Nvidia, since half of Ion is Intel's Atom. That said, after Nvidia punted Intel's chipset out of the new MacBooks, we're not all that surprised Intel's putting up a more hardcore defense here—after all, we're talking a whole new ecosystem Intel wants to have all to itself.

Heart-shaped waffles picture (even though they're a little burnt) because, uh, heart-shaped waffles sound delicious right about now.

Update: An Intel spokesperson responds that, "Intel does sell both stand alone Atom processors and Atom processors with Intel chipsets. OEMs can select whatever chipset they want." Which is great, since that's the way it should be. It's still probably safe to say that even if Digitimes' story is exaggerated, Intel ain't exactly happy with Nvidia poking around in the netbook space though. [Digitimes, Image: adrian_s/Flickr]

It's far from the first time an errant string of code has unintentionally revealed new Apple products in the pipeline, and it just makes sense. For one, it will push parity across their product line, so that everything has the same baseline level of (HD) video performance and foundation for GPU-accelerated applications. Also, one of the few concrete(ish) rumors about a new product at the Jobs-less Macworld is an updated Mac mini.

Obviously, a Mac mini that could roll with Full HD video without breaking a sweat would make a fairly compelling home theater machine. An HDMI port would be nice, but I guess we'll learn to love the dongle. [MacRumors]

Nvidia calls its new platform—Atom + GeForce 9400M (the same chipset as the aluminum MacBooks—Ion. Performance-wise, Nvidia is promising 5x faster graphics and 10x faster video transcoding than a standard Atom-powered netbook running on Intel's current platform. The Call of Duty thing, I still want to see before I totally believe it, but they promised 25-30s running at 1024x768 resolution. Not amazing but playable. Before you ask, it'll run Crysis, though the results would make you hurt—which is still better than the current netbook crop. (If you proceed to ask anyway or if it will blend, I will ban you.)

So, it'll run graphics faster, better, meaning netbooks that won't cry when it comes to video tasks, like playing 1080p Full HD video. And you'll see more performance benefits as OSes and apps take advantage of GPU acceleration—like Windows 7, Snow Leopard (Hackintosh power!) and any other CUDA or OpenCL app (admittedly not super common yet). Yeah, you'll be able to actually run Vista Premium and Windows 7 and not hate life (if you've got the RAM too, anyway). Supposedly all with comparable battery life to current systems.

Bad news? We won't see Ion netbooks until about midway through 2009, and when we do they're going to cost a bit more than other netbooks—"within $50" of standard netbook pricing, since Nvidia is positioning them as "premium" netbooks, whatever the hell that means. And this still doesn't help netbooks' other serious shortcomings, like multitasking or crummy keyboards.

But at least they'll suck just a little bit less. [Nvidia]

Since the hardware is capable of all of these things, it means that they can all be enabled by a software/firmware/driver update. Whether or not that happens is entirely up to Apple. While you can argue that Hybrid SLI—using both GPUs at once—has a limited, balls-to-the-wall utility, being able to switch between the integrated 9400M and discrete 9600M GT on the fly without logging out would obviously be enormously easier than the current setup, and allow for some more creative automatic energy preferences—discrete when plugged in, integrated on battery. Hell, you can do it in Windows on some machines.

But since it's Apple it's also entirely possible we'll never see any of this to come to pass—GPU-accelerated video decoding has totally been possible with the 8600M GT in the previous-gen MacBook Pros, and well, you know where that stands. [Apple & Nvidia Coverage@Giz]

They noted this apparent GPU acceleration when playing back 1080p trailers from Apple's site, which saw CPU utilization drop from 100 percent in previous gen MacBook Pros to just 28 percent in current MacBooks, even though the CPU is the same speed and the Pro has more RAM (new MacBooks have a faster FSB, but it wouldn't account for this kind of bump). Nvidia cards do have hardware support for video decoding, so this would make sense, but Apple hasn't used it before.

The other possibility that MacRumors floats is that these changes could be based on improvements slotted for Snow Leopard, namely Quicktime X, "which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback." Apple hasn't confirmed this, so if you've got one of the new MacBooks and old one to compare, check it out and let us know how it looks. [MacRumors]

Two graphics cards? It sounds crazy, preposterous, retardiculous. It's actually not. It's not unique to the MacBook Pro at all. PC users might be more familiar with Nvidia's Hybrid SLI, which pulls similar dual-card wizardry. In a nutshell, it lets you use the less power-hungry integrated graphics processor when you're doing lighter stuff to save battery, and then when you want a lot of video-crunching Mr. T powah, you can flip on the discrete graphics card. Of course, there's balls-to-the-wall full SLI too, which uses two entirely separate graphics cards in one notebook for Hulk power and about 45 seconds of battery life, like in one of Alienware's beasts.

Nvidia's standard hybrid SLI for PC actually uses both the integrated and discrete GPU at the same time when it goes into turbo mode, and it'll let you switch on the fly or have it automatically flip between the two depending on the power source. But the MacBook Pro uses Apple's spin on Nvidia's tech that simply lets you pick one or the other (not both, booooooo) and you have to manually flip the switch in system prefs, log out and back in, pretty annoying. Battery life is apparently an issue with the new MacBook Pro, considering that the integrated 9400M card now nets you five hours of go-time, the same as the separate, more power-hungry 8600M GT in the previous model, whereas the new discrete 9600M GT now gets you only four.

The other major reason for the huge upgrade to more proficient graphic cards in both the MacBook and Pro is Snow Leopard, which will be big on parallel processing and offloading work to the graphics card—graphics cards are particularly adept at parallel processing because of the way they're designed and the fact that they have a buttload of cores. (Here's a more in-depth explanation of that.) And if graphics cards are driving more and more of the general computing experience, the truly shitty ones in the last generation of MacBooks just won't cut it.

Nvidia's been heavily investing in "General-purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units" (GPGPU)—again, using the graphics card for more general applications—on its own for a while, actually. When they demoed their latest, most badass cards for me a few months ago, it was heavily tilted on those types of applications, including in-game physics and Folding@Home. They actually have their own development kit called CUDA that lets programmers leverage graphics cards using a standard programming language—PhysX, a physics gaming engine, is probably the most well-known application of it so far. (Nvidia isn't sure when PhysX come to Mac, but they're looking at it.) Not so coincidentally, CUDA for Mac came out in August. These cards also support Apple's own graphics programming language, called OpenCL.

So even if you're the type of person that browses the net, edits Office docs and fiddles around in Photoshop rather than the type that plays WoW: Wrath of the Lich King or cuts video, graphics cards will matter to you almost as much as it does to those people: They're going to be critical not just in a lot of the awesome stuff you'll see coming out in the next couple of years but increasingly so in the way operating systems run, whether it's from Apple or Microsoft or anyone else. So get ready to hear a lot more about them.

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