Apple is stepping up the pace of research and development of its own artificial intelligence accelerators to reduce its dependence on third-party manufacturers – the company intends to completely sever its relationship with Nvidia, which has never been particularly cordial.
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In November 2020, Apple introduced the M1 chip, the first proprietary processor for the Mac series of computers. Thus, the company broke ties with Intel, which had long been responsible for the processors in Apple PCs. Now Apple intends to reduce its dependence on another third-party supplier – Nvidia. Today, its hardware is required to run many of the AI functions in the Apple Intelligence suite. Nvidia controls, according to various estimates, from 70% to 95% of the AI accelerator market. This placed it among the most valuable companies in the world and at one point was worth more than Apple. Interestingly, Apple does not purchase Nvidia equipment directly, but rents access to it from cloud operators Amazon and Microsoft. But this will not always continue: Apple, according to some reports, has attracted Broadcom to develop its own AI accelerator.
The relationship between Apple and Nvidia dates back to the early 2000s, when green graphics cards appeared in Mac computers. But even then, relations between the companies were tense: during a meeting with one of the senior members of Nvidia management, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that Nvidia products used technology copied from the animation studio Pixar, which at that time had a controlling stake belonged to Jobs. Nvidia’s top manager denied this accusation, but Jobs simply ignored him until the end of the meeting, The Information resource said. Nvidia, in turn, also does not like working with Apple, considering it too demanding for a company that is not constantly on the list of its top ten clients.
Apple had a difficult time working with Nvidia because its graphics cards were considered insufficiently energy efficient and produced a lot of heat, which was undesirable for laptops. When Apple approached Nvidia with a proposal to develop chips specifically for the MacBook, it was refused. Discontent increased in 2008 when a faulty Nvidia graphics card found its way into computers from Apple, Dell, and HP; The Bumpgate incident contributed to Apple’s transition to AMD video cards and the development of its own processors. In 2019, Apple stopped working with Nvidia to release drivers for macOS Mojave – this made it difficult to support working machines and did not allow the installation of up-to-date video cards on Mac computers. It was not possible to establish who at Apple came from the initiative to stop supporting drivers.
Today, Nvidia executives say the animosity is largely one-sided and the company is open to working with Apple. Apple intends to introduce its own AI accelerators, codenamed Baltra, in 2026, which are expected to be produced by TSMC using the N3P process technology. This process technology will debut in chips for the iPhone 17 Pro.