Apple are the ones pushing for integrated GPU's. That's why there are no discrete GPU's in the rMBP 13" and MBA's.
Hardly. AMD is moving the market to APUs and Intel knows it has to do something better than their HD 4000/5000 or they will open up x86 to AMD. It's another reason for the
Xeon Phi to compete against GPGPUs and the
HSA Initiative which is founded upon LLVM and OpenCL.
Apple wants SoC to have as small a form-factor as possible while improving system performance.
The Macbook AIR is an example of where Mobile GPGPUs have room to scale down before they're able to put them back in such a thin frame. Until then, the integrated section from Intel's HD 4000 will have to do.
The moment Nvidia and AMD can put an extremely thin, low power, but dedicated discrete gpgpu in that form factor Apple will jump on it. AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 8000 series is reportedly 33% more power efficient in power, even at 28nm. AMD is moving to 20nm in 2013 and 14nm in 2014 thanks to GlobalFoundries.
The power efficiency increases and the die size drops will be win/win for Apple's thin is in all the way up to the thin doesn't matter Mac Pro.
AMD is dropping their GPGPUs pricing for the HD 8000 series by > 20% while computational improvements are up > 60% for SP and DP.
New materials will soon launch CPU/GPGPU designs producing performance and power consumption drops that will once again remind us all how amazing this industry is relative to any other in the globe.
