Graphics-Enabled CPUs To Take Off In 2011

angry tapir writes "Half the notebook computers and a growing number of desktops shipped in 2011 will run on graphics-enabled microprocessors as designers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) increase competition for the units that raise multimedia speeds without add-ons. The processors with built-in graphics capabilities will be installed this year on 115 million notebooks, half of total shipments, and 63 million desktop PCs, or 45 percent of the total, according to analysts."

Supercomputing

[louic]

Depending on how exactly these processors will look like, they may be very interesting for speeding up scientific computations. The fastest computer in the world at this moment is already GPU based, and such a CPU/GPU hybrid can possibly be even more efficient by removing the slow communication between CPU and GPU.

Overheating already...

[Anonymous Coward]

...CPU handling the graphics in laptops is already causing overheating issues.

Two cases in point, a Toshiba laptop with AMD and a 13" MacBook Pro with Intel, the fans run annoyingly at high speed, the bottoms are hot enough to fry eggs on. That's just sitting with one web page open. How long can one expect machine like that to last? A year? two maybe?

Are web pages going to suddenly tone down their act, quit using video, animation, Flash? Text and pictures only? If they do that, then what? Hardware makers only start making laptops that can handle web text?

Dedicated graphics is the way to go, CPU and graphics on separate dies away from each other, separate the heat sources.

I can just imagine the scene where a bunch of power hungry types just made the decision to move towards integrated graphics, and a highly intelligent engineer just stomping out of the boardroom in protest.