By Sylvie Barak
06 October 2008, 9:24 PM

THE MAC BLOGOSPHERE is all a flutter with rumours that a new Macbook could soon be on its way, complete with an Nvidia graphics chipset. A cryptic promo pic on Nvidia’s site and whispers that certain NV employees have actually seen some is sending fanboys into a frenzy.

The chipset in question seems to be the MCP7A-U, integrated into Mac’s GPU for the MacBook and possibly even the MacBook Air. Nvidia declined to comment on the matter. If the rumours are true, however, it could be less about Apple "embracing gaming" and more about not having to use a CPU to decode HD video anymore, being able to transcode on the IGP instead.

Adobe has already announced that its new Creative Suite 4 will support Nvidia graphics acceleration, so if we were Apple, we might be thinking of announcing new Nvidia powered Macs on the same day as the CS4 launch (October 30th). But current rumours believe the fruity themed toymaker could announce the new Macs sooner than that, as early as the middle of next week even.

As for Cuda, there is already a Cuda toolkit for Mac OS X, so it stands to reason that Apple could develop Cuda-based enhancements for its Aperture, Logic and Final Cut products. That is, if they want to.