Intel Corp (INTC)

[chipguy]

THAT BEING SAID, the idea that integrated graphics from Intel will significantly eat into the discrete graphics space is, I believe, too pessimistic.

Serious gamers are a small fraction of the graphics market, a low
single digit percentage probably for high end graphics cards.

The vast majority of graphics cards are basic entry level units
that can be replaced by MPU integrated graphics. This has been
happening over the last two years at an increasing rate.

The problem for Nvidia is the high volume entry level card market
is crucial. It drives up GPU manufacturing volumes, reducing
variable costs and per device amortized NRE, and lets them cherry
pick the high tail of the yield bell curve for its high end cards.

As discrete graphic cards gets pushed into a high end niche the
falling down the economy of scale pushes unit cost exponentially
higher which in a nasty little feedback circle increases IGPU
uptake.

That is why Nvidia is paddling like hell to get into non PC markets
like supercomputing, SoCs for handheld devices etc.