Next year Intel will ship IGPs with Full HD video decoding and support for DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. But the biggest change will come in 2009 when Intel will start shipping processors with integrated graphics. The firm claims these chips will feature 10 times the performance of today's IGPs and offer better than console level graphics capabilities.
The interesting part here is the fact that Intel will have integrated graphics not only in its entry level and mobile CPU’s, but also its mainstream processors. By moving to 45nm next year and to 32nm within the next two to three years, Intel will have a lot more die space into which it can fit its graphics architecture.
With integrated memory controllers, QuickPath architecture and now integrated graphics into the CPU packaging, its looking like Intel is following AMD and soon its chipsets will be PCI Express tunnels and very little else. We can only presume that Intel’s slogan will be something like “Buy an Intel CPU, get free Intel graphics”.
There wasn’t much talk about Intel discrete graphics, the only thing that was really mentioned was the fact that Intel will have a top to bottom range of cards and that you might want Intel’s integrated CPU graphics for other reasons, which might be a hint to an Intel hybrid SLI type of solution.