GPU shipments ahead year-over-year in Q3

A new report from Jon Peddie Research shows that the global PC-based Graphics Processor Units (GPU) market reached 101 million units in Q3 ’21 and PC CPUs shipments increased by 9% year over year.

The report found that, overall, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of -1.1% during 2020–2025 and reach an installed base of 3,249 million units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of discrete GPUs (dGPU) in the PC will grow to reach a level of 31%.

AMD’s overall market share percentage from last quarter increased 1.4%, Intel’s market share decreased by -6.2%, and Nvidia’s market share increased 4.86%.

Overall GPU unit shipments decreased by -18.2% from last quarter, AMD shipments decreased by -11.4%, Intel’s shipments decreased by -25.6%, while Nvidia’s shipments increased by 8.0%.

Quick highlights

• The GPU’s overall attach rate (which includes integrated and discrete GPUs, desktop, notebook, and workstations) to PCs for the quarter was 125%, up 7.6% from last quarter.
• The overall PC CPU market decreased by -23.1% quarter-to-quarter and increased 9.2% year-to-year.
• Desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs that use discrete GPUs) increased by 10.9% from the last quarter.
• This quarter saw a -6.9% change in tablet shipments from last quarter.

The third quarter used to be the strongest relative to Q2, but recessions and pandemics have scrambled seasonality, according to Peddie Research. Even so, this quarter was the lowest ever, from the previous quarter. This quarter was down -18.2% from last quarter which way is below the 10-year average of -5.2%.

GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market because a GPU goes into a system before the suppliers ship the PC. Most of the Semiconductor vendors are guiding up for the next quarter, an average of 2.7%. Last quarter they guided -1.5% which was too high.

Average selling prices remain high as supply is still constrained.

Jon Peddie, President of JPR, noted, “Covid continues to unbalance the fragile supply chain that relied too heavily upon a just-in-time strategy. We don’t expect to see a stabilized supply chain until the end of 2022. In the meantime, there will be some surprises.”

Most of the semiconductor vendors are guiding up for the next quarter by an average of 3%. Some of that guidance is based on normal seasonality, but there is still a Coronavirus impact factor and a hangover in the supply chain.