A surge in tablet popularity, not to mention continually increasing notebook sales, may well help GPU sales dwindle by well over 10% during the next four years and in turn drive the development of graphics-enabled CPUs.
Tablet devices are having an impact.
Market research firm iSuppli maintains that sales of tablets and notebooks will depress discrete graphics device shipments from 73 million in 2009 to 62 million by 2014. Their rise in popularity may well fast-track the take-up of new graphics enabled processors including CPUs to replace the old style GPUs.
As The Inquirer notes, iSuppli predicts that the doubling of ultra-portable shipments of tablets and notebooks by 2014 will mean that those products will lead the way. As well as higher shipments iSuppli foresees 82.9% of notebook PCs using “graphics crunching” microchips by 2014, compared to 39% today.
“The booming popularity of products like ultra-portable notebooks and Apple Inc.’s iPad has put the spotlight on products with small and innovative form factors,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms, for iSuppli.
The iSuppli-man continues, “To develop such products, PC makers are adopting highly integrated semiconductor solutions that use less power and generate less heat, thus allowing smaller form factors. By integrating functions that normally would be implemented in a separate graphics chip, graphics-enabled microprocessors play a key role in aiding this effort.”
The iSuppli report notes that Intel has “cornered the market for graphics-enabled microprocessors, with its Core i Series. However, they expect AMD to launch graphics-enabled microprocessors “in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 2011 time frame”.
The Inquirer also points out that the focus on small form factor devices bodes equally well for ARM, which could “win big in the tablet market after years of success in the smartphone arena”, adding that ARM’s new A10 Eagle chip is being licensed by Texas Instruments for mobile computing devices.
Based on