Integrated Graphics Living on Borrowed Time

This article, in Maximum PC, makes that statement. It’s not really an honest one, however, but a deception – you know, one of those stories where the actual words are used to confuse the reader, yet, in the most exact sense, no lies are there.

The real story is that what the story is trying to convey is the fact that soon the major suppliers of onboard (separate) graphics chipsets will have no need to produce them, as that function will be included on the main CPU.

Integrated graphics has run its course and will soon become virtually extinct, according to a new report by Jon Peddie Research (JPR). The prediction? In just four years time, IGPs won’t even make up 1 percent of all GPUs shipped.

That’s in stark contrast to 2008, in which integrated graphics accounted for 67 percent of all graphics chips shipped. But JPR sees IGPs stronghold weakening to just 20 percent by 2011, resulting in a significant gains for both the discrete GPU market and emerging CPU+GPU technologies.

If JPR is correct, it will be interesting to see how Intel fares in an IGP-less world. The No. 1 CPU chip maker also accounts for roughly half of all desktop and notebook graphics, a position made possible due to the demand for IGP chipsets. Both Intel and AMD (Fusion) are working on CPUs with embedded graphics, which JPR believes will be a strong segment starting sometime between 2010 and 2012. For Intel’s part, the company thinks it will be ready to serve the desktop (Clarkdale) and notebook (Arrandale) markets with CPUs with embedded graphics cores by the end this year, and AMD’s Fusion is expected sometime in 2011.

the sabretooth tiger, the wooly mammoth, the dodo bird…all are gone. But will the Integrated Graphics Unit join them in the land of things no longer around?

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In the long run we are all dead.John Maynard Keynes