The victim of CPU, GPU fusion: memory

According to a report issued by iSuppli, a well-known market regulation agency, today, with the accelerated integration of GPU graphics cores into CPU processors, the memory chips used in traditional graphics cards will be negatively impacted, and the share of the entire DRAM market will gradually decline over the next few years.

Because of the special use of memory chips, the proportion in the DRAM market has always been low. According to iSuppli's estimates, this share was only 4.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2010. It will rise slightly to 5.0% in the first quarter of next year and then remain stable throughout 2011.

However, starting from the fourth quarter of 2011, the memory share will start to decline slowly and decisively. By 2014, it will lose another 0.5% to about 4.4%.

Mike Howard, a senior analyst at iSuppli's DRAM industry, said: "The price of video memory is relatively more expensive, and the supply situation is also more stable than standard DRAM, but this market will not have significant growth in the future. In the next few years, due to responsible for 2D, 3D graphics The GPU will gradually be integrated into the CPU, and the market demand for video memory will also slow down."

Right now, Intel and AMD are all integrating the traditionally independent GPU chip into the CPU processor. The latter is planning to achieve the unification of the underlying architecture through the so-called Fusion APU. Although this approach does not completely exclude the discrete graphics card, it is clear that the motherboard integrated graphics, entry-level discrete graphics will be on the verge of desperation, memory will naturally lose a large number of customers, the future focus on the service target will be high-end discrete graphics and game consoles .