Jon Peddie Research said Monday that the workstation graphics market is alive and well, cranking out chips powering the latest fan-made Star Wars lightsaber battles, virtual water, and CGI car racing.

The market grew by 802,000 units during the fourth quarter, with add-in cards accounting for nearly $285 million in revenue. Ironically, as JPR notes, pioneer 3Dlabs exited the workstation market in 2006, complaining that there wasn't enough business.

That left more market to Nvidia, whose rivalry with AMD's ATI graphics subsidiary extends into the workstation world. While the PC desktop graphics race is virtually neck-and-neck, Nvidia owns the workstation market, selling four times as many units as ATI. And it's a lucrative market, too - more than half of the units sold cost more than $1,500.

JPR also tracks the workstation PC market; overall, it showed continued strength in Q4'06, with vendors shipping roughly 706 thousand workstations, accounting for almost $1.8 billion in revenue, the firm reported. For the year, units were up 22 percent to 2.5 million and revenue up 17.3 percent to $6.2 billion. Then again, with CGI becoming a de facto part of movie making, is there any reason to believe that demand will drop off?

Post by Mark Hachman