At the end of this year, AMD will close a deal that will have Apple buying AMD chips for the first time.AMD will close the deal, all right. The question is, will Apple keep using ATI, which is being acquired by AMD (it’s all over but the foregone shareholders’ vote), as a supplier for its critical graphics components? For all it’s worth (rather little), I’m on record as supporting AMD selling ATI technology under the AMD brand. In other words, Intel OEMs that use ATI cards or integrated graphics chips will be issued new badge stickers saying, “AMD Inside.”Whether AMD chooses to use or lose the ATI brand will make no difference in the way ATI’s products are treated post-acquisitioin. Intel will cast the stinkeye at any sizeable OEM that continues to use ATI parts. Some will bend to Intel’s will and some will keep using what works best for their systems. At present, ATI has strong leadership in power-efficient, fast 3-D graphics. The MacBook Pro I’m using has a 256 MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU. With it, I can pile all the QuickTime or Quartz Composer instances I please on the display at once without anything going jerky. MacBook Pro is a desktop replacement-grade notebook, and it needs desktop graphics. On August 7, I predict that Apple will claim the distinction of being the first first-tier vendor to integrate 64-bit Core Microarchitecture CPUs across its notebook, desktop, workstation and server products (the iMac for the academic market, MacBook and Mac mini won’t get the new CPU). Intel’s Paul Otellini can be expected to make his customary 30-second appearance on stage with Steve to commemorate this event. But is Paul going to be steamed that ATI/AMD and Intel guts will be strapped together in every 64-bit Intel Mac?That’s presuming that Apple doesn’t change horses mid-stream. If it does, it doesn’t necessarily mean Intel had a hand in it. Apple sends the message that it won’t get pushed around, and I can’t see Apple letting anyone wink, hint, whisper or disincentive-ize it into switching suppliers.When Intel OEMs start their entirely coincidental synchronized exodus from ATI to NVidia and Intel integrated graphics in 3…2…1, will Apple join the march? We’ll know on August 7. Software Development