Graphics and multimedia market research specialists Jon Peddie Research has just published figures showing the current state of play in the GPU industry. The main headlining stats from the recent report includes the swings in the GPU shifting fortunes of AMD, Intel and Nvidia and the fact that GPU shipments were up quarter-to-quarter by 3.2 per cent but down year-on-year by 4.5 per cent.
JPR says that graphics chips are becoming one of the most highly demanded items in computing, not only for the obvious reason that every computer needs a display and every gaming computer needs a relatively beefy GPU, but also because of the demand for GPUs to be utilised in "supercomputers, remote workstations, and simulators".
Getting to the meat in this research sandwich, lets look in turn at the AMD, Intel and Nvidia figures:
AMD
AMD enjoyed increased shipments of APUs and of its discrete graphics in notebooks. "APUs increased 16.7% from the previous quarter, and increased 10.3% in notebooks," reported JPR. "AMD's discrete desktop shipments decreased 10.7% and notebook discrete shipments increased 30.6%". Overall graphics shipments were up by 11 per cent.
Intel
"Intel's desktop processor embedded graphics (EPGs) shipments increased from last quarter by 7.2%, and notebooks increased by 1.9%". This resulted in an overall PC graphics shipment increase of 4.1 per cent for Intel said JPR.
Nvidia
Nvidia felt the sharp end of the stick in the most recent reported quarter. Its discrete desktop shipments were down over a fifth (21 per cent down). Meanwhile its notebook shipments were up by nearly 7 per cent - not enough to make up for its desktop slump - the overall picture was an 8.3 per cent downturn in GPU shipments.
As mentioned in the intro overall industry shipments were better than in Q1 2014 but worse than those of a year ago. Dedicated graphics cards shipments from AIBs declined 17.5 per cent. The attach rate for GPUs was up 3.2 per cent to 139 per cent even though 68 per cent of PCs rely solely on integrated graphics.
