Market research firm Instat estimates that PC core-logic chipset market will grow from $6.9 billion in 2005 to $10.3 billion in 2009. Analyst Chris Kissel believes that continued growth in PCs demand combined with new standards will create a dynamic market for new chipset designs. According to Kissel, AMD can enjoy a growing "ecosystem" for its processors while the environment for Intel processors is shrinking due to Intel's drive to offer complete platforms, including chipsets.

"In just the next few years, new chipsets will be required to support multicore processors, new front-side bus (FSB) architectures, new peripheral interfaces, and a growing list of features, such as virtualization and security," explained Kissel. "The chipset is a critical component in the PC design and chipset designs are changing rapidly to support these new features driven by changing PC usage models."

Kissel estimates that currently 20 percent of x86 processors use integrated memory - a figure that could climb to about 70 percent by 2009, he said. After a slower than expected start for PCI Express, the new interface is quickly taking over PCI- and AGP based devices. By 2009, Kissel believes, 84 percent of all graphics interfaces and 98 percent of all peripheral interfaces will be PCI Express-based. (THG)