According to the market research firm iSuppli Corp., the accelerated trend in the PC market toward integrating graphics capabilities into the Central Processing Unit (CPU) will have a negative impact on graphics-oriented memory, causing its share of the overall DRAM market to decline during the next few years. A specialty segment of the larger DRAM market, the graphics memory industry is projected to grow only slightly at the beginning of next year, despite its relative insulation from the more disruptive fluctuations of the commodity memory market. Graphics in the first quarter of 2011 will make up 5 percent of the overall market for memory. While it’s expected to maintain its course through most of the year, the market will then begin a slight but steady decline starting in the final quarter of 2011. By 2014, the graphics memory segment will account for roughly 4.4 percent.

“While graphics memory commands a price premium and is more stable in demand compared to commodity DRAM, the market is not projected to grow dramatically in the future,” said Mike Howard, Principal Analyst (DRAM & Memory) at iSuppli. “In the coming years, demand for graphic memory will ease as manufacturing trends favor the integration of the graphic processing unit (GPU)-the microprocessor responsible for rendering 2-D or 3-D images-into a computer’s CPU.” The stunning high-end graphics provided by dedicated video cards will still be needed for immersive gaming and similar activities that require advanced memory and exceptional performance. However, an integrated approach-in which graphic functionality is embedded into a motherboard and utilizes the system memory of a computer-will provide more than adequate performance for the majority of PC users. As a result, the graphics memory market will be impacted, iSuppli warns.  Read more...