Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, today announced estimated global graphics chip shipments for 2009 will see the worst ever year-over-year drop in shipments. The decrease in shipments for 2009 will be even worse than the 2000-20001 recession. However, 2010 promises an amazing comebac

Graphics chip shipments are a leading market indicator - the graphics chips go to the ODMs and OEMs, which then build and ship PCs.

Taking together our data, interviews with suppliers, and world economic forecast models, we believe the worst is over and Q3 will show recovery leading all the way through 2010, subject to seasonal adjustments.

Portable devices such as notebooks, laptops, and netbooks will be the strong, but they will not overwhelm desktops which are still the preferred choice of platform for the power users and professionals.

Architectural changes like Intel's Nehalem and new product introductions from AMD, ATI, Intel, and Nvidia are going to be disruptive to the status quo and traditional market share of the suppliers. The continued expansion and development of heterogeneous computing and GPU compute will stimulate growth in 2010 enabled by Apple's and Microsoft's new operating systems.

New programming capabilities using OpenCL, DirectX 11, and Nvidia's CUDA architecture will remove barriers to the exploitation of the GPU as a serious, economical, and powerful co-processor in all level of PCs.

The net result is a new PC environment starting in Q3, and this new environment will have a beneficial impact on computing in 2010 onward.

Read the entire article at JPR.