MacRumors is reporting a story that future iMacs and Mac Minis will use the nVidia chipset introduced in the latest MacBooks.  Evidence has been found in OSX configuration files.  Interesting as this is, it should hardly be surprising.

With the exception of the Mac Pro, all Macs are essentially laptops.  Both the Mac Mini and the iMac broke new ground in the industry by introducing form factors that were smaller and sexier than anyone thought possible.  The internals of these machines are closer to laptops than traditional desktops.  The memory used by these machines is laptop memory.  The only exception to this is with the larger capacity 3.5” hard drives used in these machines, but the hard drive controller for a 2.5” drive is exactly the same.

This is a great strategy for Apple.  By using common hardware on as many machines as possible, they can improve reliability, streamline manufacturing, a get the best possible volume discounts from their suppliers.

Looking further ahead to OpenCL, having the same graphics hardware on many different machines is likely to make predicting performance of OpenCL applications much easier.  Reducing the number of machine configurations makes life easier for everyone, including developers.