It’s worth noting, though, that this particular rumor follows relatively close on the heels of Apple’s April acquisition of P.A. Semi, a boutique semiconductor design company that specializes in super-low-power processors. In early 2007, P.A. Semi debuted a 64-bit dual core microprocessor that the company claimed is 300 percent more efficient than any comparable chip; it consumed only 5 to 13 watts running at 2 gigahertz. That was well over a year ago–who knows what they’ve come up with since then?

So maybe Apple (AAPL) is forgoing Montevina in favor of a P.A. Semi-designed chipset. Perhaps we’re nearing the moment when Apple begins pushing its own processor innovations out into the market in concert with those it makes in hardware and software.

Or, perhaps not.

One, Freedman says the company had a “mis-step in the completion of FCC certification” for the next-generation Centrino processor with support for the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. “Without the certification,” he contends, “the CPUs can only be sold outside the U.S.” He says the impact of the issue is likely to be a slower ramp of 802.11n, as the new Montevina chipset can ship with processors that support 802.11 a/b/g.

Meanwhile, he also says that issues have cropped up with the integrated graphics in the Montevina platform. He says failures are occurring at notebook OEMs.

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The Apple (AAPL) Web site went offline for a bit this morning, and when it returned it featured a handful of new iMacs, all of them apparently running Intel’s (INTC) as-of-yet unannounced X9100 Montevina processor. Priced between $1,199 and $2,199, the latest iteration of Apple’s iconic all-in-one system features the same enclosure as its predecessors, outfitted with the most powerful graphics cards yet available on the system and Core 2 Duos running at 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz and 3.06 GHz. All four have 1066MHz front-side buses and 6MB of L2 cache, configurations curiously absent from Intel’s current price list but expected to debut with Intel’s Montevina refresh.

How is it that Apple’s able to ship machines running unannounced Intel product? Perhaps the company’s designed its product roadmap to dovetail perfectly with Intel’s. Or, perhaps, Apple’s agreement with Intel is another of CEO Steve Jobs’s sweetheart-of-a-deal masterpieces that gives the company early access to Intel’s newest chips.