Growth spurt
Graphics market watcher Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has released its estimated figures for the total graphics market last year and they show surprisingly robust growth.
In a year which started with everyone reducing their inventories are much as they could, the graphics market still managed to grow by an estimated 14 percent. This represents the strongest year-on-year growth since 2006 and presumably forms the basis of the JPR projection of 27.9 percent growth this year.
In Q4 Intel remained the leader, with so many systems based on its processors also coming with its integrated graphics. A lot of this was down to netbooks, but it seems to have done well in desktop too.
AMD did well in notebook IGP, but surprisingly lost some share in discrete - both desktop and notebook - which JPR puts down to constraints in in the supply of products using the 40nm process. Conversely, NVIDIA gained a bit in desktop discrete, but lost some in IGP.
The IGP segment as a whole is likely to wither and die as it is gradually replaced by a new category: CIG - CPU integrated graphics. Intel has already started putting the graphics on the same piece of silicon as the CPU with ‘the dales' and Pine Trail, and AMD is expected to finally realise its ‘fusion' promise next year.
