Soundwave said:
There's not many companies that can make GPUs, it's why even Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft are basically stuck choosing between AMD or Nvidia most of the time. To create some new GPU gaming architecture that could viably compete would be a massive undertaking for someone else and they would hamstrung by the same modern reality of chip production ... things like RAM and other key components are going to be sky high because every bit of that which goes into some gamer's GPU could have been used for a more profitable AI server instead. |
This.
GPU's are hard to make good... It's an entire ecosystem you need to get working, not just the hardware, but the software as well.
S3 last attempt was with their Chrome series of graphics chips which dropped around 2004... And were "relevant" until around 2009.
And whilst they were relatively performant, they suffered one caveat... Compatibility and drivers.
In VIA's case though, it didn't matter if Chrome managed to secure marketshare, just developing their graphics I.P. was sufficient enough as it would end up in integrated graphics anyway.
Since HTC bought S3 Graphics, they are just used for S3's patents which are extremely extensive.
Intel despite having the most "graphics chips" in the PC market for most of it's life, struggled to make a decent graphics processor with decent software support.
I's only relatively recently where they have been investing heavily in GPU development, mostly as a response from nVidia who is making trillions from graphics chips and A.I... But even as of today, with billions invested, their drivers are still not as seamless as AMD or nVidia's and they have only secured a rounding error in marketshare in the discreet GPU space.
BUT. It is improving their integrated graphics which have improved drastically in recent years... I don't even call them Intel Decelerators anymore.
We also have Matrox who has always stuck in the market, but essentially stopped GPU development after their Parhelia couldn't garner marketshare... Now they rebadge AMD or Intel GPU's for professional markets.
We had STMicro with it's Kyro graphics chips... Which again, despite being very budget friendly, did exhibit artifacting/missing geometry in games as it just lacked that refined software support... Eventually the company would do a full pivot and focus on mobile, where they had great success with PowerVR.
GPU's are hard to make, but they are also hard to continuously develop to keep pace with AMD and nVidia's release cadence.
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