Chipmakers Get Graphic in 'Battle Royal' for Future

Three Silicon Valley companies are jockeying to plot the future course for chips that create the most realistic computer graphics, the Wall Street Journal reports. "All of them agree that graphics are the field where the battle is going to be fought," one analyst says of Intel, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. "They're going down different paths but approaching the same thing."

AMD and Nvidia make graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are put next to microprocessors or added to computers via a graphics card; Intel places graphics circuitry in chip sets that surround microprocessors, its area of expertise. Gateway appears to have sided with the former, using a top Nvidia GPU but a less powerful Intel microprocessor in a recent laptop. (More Intel stories.)