30% of desktops to have 2 GPUs by 2012 ... Really?

According to a recent report by the Jon Peddie Research Group GPU vendors are in for a bumper few years. What's more, two-thirds of desktops sold will be multi-GPU capable. I just can't see this happening anytime soon.

Most people don't know what a GPU is, so trying to sell them two is a major uphill struggleI see two issues working against this prediction. First, I just can't see a driving force for multi-GPU systems. Sure, a few years back it looked like PC games were going to push the PC hardware envelope hard, resulting in games such as Crysis where you had to wait over a year for the technology to catch up to be able to get the best out of the game. This trend seems to have passed (after all, it doesn't make good business sense to release a game that doesn't play well on existing hardware) and PC games don't seem to tax the hardware (GPU and CPU) as much as they used to. Not only is the silicon that we use in PCs better and faster (thanks to Moore's Law), but also games just seem less demanding. Maybe this is because so many PC games are ports of console games, or that game studios are playing it safe, but you can get almost everything you want (except bragging rights)out of a $99 graphics card.

Then there's that little issue of the soggy economy. Unless OEMs can come out with a really compelling reason why customers need multi-GPU, and then offer than to the mass market at a palatable price, it's just not going to happen. Most people don't know what a GPU is, so trying to sell them two is a major uphill struggle.

Another factor working against the multi-GPU hypothesis is the fact that we're moving away from the discrete GPU and onto platforms where there's a GPU on the motherboard. It saves power, generates less heat, and it's cheaper. And, maybe most importantly, it's enough for most people. Truth is that I would say that maybe 30% of desktops are used for gaming, and of that maybe 5% are hardcore gaming systems. I just can't see why 30% of desktops would need multi-GPUs support, let alone two or more GPUs.

Maybe all this will change if Apple makes multi-GPU cool and decide to cram two GPUs into the Mac lineup.