It's interesting that you posted about this Rob. The ongoing Folding@Home discussion on the Off Topic forum, spurred me yesterday to try and take a look at the reasons behind Intel staying behind on the graphics processing arena. This is particularly interesting because AMD very successfully moved into it.
Some web searching -- and a lot of reading weird or inflammatory stuff I'd rather hadn't -- I finally came to what I believe is the meat of it; the acquisitions that took place starting in the mid 00s. Specifically AMD grabbing ATI in 2006 before Intel did, and Nvidia buying Aegeia in 2008, leaving Intel with Havok for leftovers. Which Intel eventually bought.
It's good to see Intel getting into the game, even if this late. It's particularly good because Intel does bring good innovation with its IGP solution, catering for an entry-level market that has seen little love. If GMA HD can come to a respectable performance level, it's not difficult to imagine a HTPCs, office desktops, and other designs being completely stripped of the need to have a dedicated GPU card or chip. I dunno about anyone else, but this would be great!
