Room for one more
In a supplement to his earlier blog post on Intel’s impending discrete graphics project Larrabee, graphics guru Jon Peddie starts by correcting the numbers he previously used to estimate the total available market (TAM) for Larrabee.
It seems Peddie’s jet set life caught up with him and in his haste to catch a plane he mistakenly used the whole discrete graphics market, including notebook, instead of just the desktop discrete market to derive his numbers from.
Given that Peddie doesn’t reckon Intel will have a notebook version in the first full year of Larrabee (or Larry’s Bee as he’s renamed it), it was therefore a mistake to include that market in his calculations. So this results in a TAM figure of $3.3 billion instead of $4.6 billion as previously stated.
Having got that out of the way, Peddie goes on to suggest that Larrabee way well turn out to be for the greater good of PC gaming, not that he expects NVIDIA and AMD/ATI to see it that way. The reason is simple: sheer force of marketing.
Intel spends many times as much on marketing every year as AMD and NVIDIA combined and it tends to back its new projects with a major marketing push. I can remember going to a posh West End restaurant that Intel had taken over for the launch of its now forgotten Viiv digital home brand. Michael Owen and Jonathan Ross were there and the bubbly flowed all night.
So we can safely assume that Intel will augment this calculated dripping of info about Larrabee with a ton of marketing in 2009 and 2010, all of which will be saying “DISCRETE GRAPHICS!!”.
Here’s Peddie’s summary of the matter: “Regardless of the quality or performance of the Bee, Intel’s brand will raise the awareness of PC gaming, and give the industry increased credibility as a viable entertainment vehicle, and as a safe bet for a consumer’s purchase.”
