AIB

MSPR finally means something, part 2

The following is a collage of stories about AIBs that occurred in Q1’18. Not meant to be an exhaustive listing of every mention of an AIB, or product announcement, it will give you some view of the general activities and areas of interest. MSPR finally means something, part 2   No longer a cheap discount disguise We’ve heard and used … Read more

What goes up when all else goes down?

Q1’18 GPU and PC shipments broke a lot of records. Q1 is traditionally a down quarter for PCs (see Figure 1). Q1’18 was down 14.1%, not a record, it went down 16.2% in Q1’16, but a big drop nonetheless. Figure 1: PC shipments and quarter-to-quarter change   As the chart indicates, the PC market has been exhibiting a steady seasonal … Read more

Jon Peddie Research Adds Cryptomining to its Data

New data including in Market Watch and Add-in-Board Reports In spite of boost from crytocurrency mining, GPU shipments decrease in the fourth quarter of 2017. Shipments were -1.5% compared to the previous quarter. Year-to-year total GPU shipments decreased -4.8%, desktop graphics decreased -2%, notebooks decreased -7%. Over 363 million graphics units shipped in 2017. AMD has increased its market share, … Read more

ASRock to enter AIB market

Success with cryptocurrency-mining mother boards leads company to next step According to a report in Digitimes, motherboard supplier ASRock reportedly will enter the AIB market in April and focus mainly on supplying AMD-based products. The company has seen an increase in the shipment proportion of high-end motherboards and rising sales for its IPC and server products. It is suggested that … Read more

MSPR finally means something

No longer a cheap discount disguise I’ve heard and used the term, MSPR (Manufacturer’s suggested retail price) for at least three decades that I can recall. In the past it has meant a discount was being offered, as in, we’re giving it to you at the manufacturers price. And as with all such promises, smelled a little off. Cryptocurrency-mining’s use … Read more

The add-in board market decreased in Q4’17 from last quarter; AMD gained market share.

Over $4.4 billion dollars of AIBs shipped in the quarter.  “The add-in graphics board market behaved seasonally in Q4'17, decreasing 4.6% sequentially, explained Jon Peddie, president of the industry’s research consulting firm Jon Peddie Research. The seasonal ten-year average for Q4 is -4.4%%, and this year it was just below that, which we think is due to the sharp rise … Read more

Cryptocurrency mining use of AIBs

The brutality of numbers: You need to make $5,000 a year to make it crypto-mining worthwhile. We have been investigating the impact on the AIB market by cryptocurrency monitoring for a while and we’ve written about it often. The following is an excerpt from an updated and curated monograph collection of our writings to give a perspective to the phenomenon … Read more

Selling shovels

Legend has it the people making the most money during the California Gold Rush were the people selling equipment to the miners. The same holds true today for the companies selling the tools for crypto-currency. Certainly it’s a safer business.

What you call VR, I call a CAVE

Back in the fall of 1991, when many of you were still in school, and the old guys reading this were trying to figure out how to get two or more AIBs to work together, Tom DeFanti, Dan Sandin and colleagues designed the very first — and trademarked — CAVE (cave automatic virtual environment), and built it at the University … Read more