Dual core to boost chipset sales

Sales revenues from chipsets are set to rise in the coming years as emerging chip technologies drive up prices, researchers have predicted.

A newly published study from market analyst firm In-Stat projects sales for this year to reach $6.9bn and increase to $10.3bn by 2009.

A chipset is a collection of microchips that support the central processor. It controls how information travels between the CPU and other components of a computer.

The growth is caused by both increasing sales of computers as well the emergence of standards including dual core processors, virtualisation technologies and faster front-side bus architectures that will drive up the prices of the units.

"The chipset is a critical component of the PC design and chipset designs are changing rapidly to support these new features driven by changing PC usage models," said In-Stat analyst Chris Kissel.

As Intel continues to develop its own chipsets as part of its strategy of putting more emphasis on selling platforms rather than individual chips, the company is set to take up an increasing share of the chipset market. This is partly offset by an increase in the sale of chipsets that support AMD processors.