Jon Peddie refers to the SandyBridge family as EGPs, embedded graphics processors, and AMD’s Llano series as HPGs, heterogeneous graphics processors, but whatever the label they may sound the death knell for IGPs. He does not see any sign that this new industry practice of including a usable GPU in their CPU having much effect on the discrete graphics card market, apart from the bumps when they were first introduced.  Compared to the IGPs of previous generations both Llano and Core i3 graphical capabilities are far beyond anything we have seen, but compared to the current generation of graphics cards they cannot stack up.  While it seems obvious that the discrete market will stay, not only because of the current generations power but also because of the faster evolution of the GPU compared to the CPU, one segment of the graphics card market will likely be disappearing.  NVIDIA and AMD have been fighting for the sub-$100 market, flooding that price point with a variety of cards that differ by as little as $5 between models.  Now that your new CPU will have the equivalent graphical processing power, why would someone toss money away on a low cost GPU?  Hopefully this does not mean a resurgence of GPUs that cost $1000+.

"In 2011, with the full scale production of scalar X86CPUs with powerful multi-core, SIMD graphics processing elements, a true inflection point has occurred in the PC and related industries. And, as a result, the ubiquitous and stalwart IGP- integrated graphics processor, is fading out of existence. For several reasons, many people believed (and some hoped) the CPU and the GPU would never be integrated:

  • GPUs are characterized by a high level of complexity, with power and cooling demands, and dramatically different memory management needs.
  • GPU design cycles are faster than those of the CPU.
  • The GPU has grown in complexity compared to the CPU, exceeding the transistor count, and matching or exceeding the die size of the CPU.
  • The x86 has steadily increased in complexity, power consumption, and become multi-core."

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