In olden days before the core series from Intel, motherboards used to have small graphics chipset on it. Rather than being integrated on the cpu. Why was this discontinued? Current gen mainstream AMD cpus do not have processor based graphics like the Intel ones do. (the G series parts come very late and technically are low end stuff.) sometimes you do not need a discreet gpu. So why was chipset graphics discontinued, it could have been used to decrease the cpu complexity on Intel side. While Amd would not need to have to launch apus. Hence saving development time.
In: Technology
There was a move to consolidate features from various chips on the board into the CPU
Originally motherboards hosted the CPU, Northbridge(Memory Access, high speed ports, and iGPU), and a Southbridge(Slow access ports like PCI and USB)
As time went on and we consolidated towards PCI-e the Southbridge lost its purpose and was dropped. Secondary port types are covered by a PCI-e to whatever converter chip.
Then we moved memory controllers into the CPU and gave them support for PCI-e internally. The Northbridge (which used to host the iGPU as well) lost most of its purpose so the remaining features were absorbed by the CPU. Starting in 2011 the mainstream AMD and Intel CPUs had absorbed all of the features of the Northbridge into the CPU so there wasn’t a high speed connected chip left to house the iGPU, it had to be built into the CPU if it was to exist at all.
This gave us a lot fewer compatibility issues, and allows for much smaller boards where the only thing that needs cooling is the CPU (the northbridge used to have a heatsink and sometimes a fan). This means that you can build a micro ITX PC and put it in a tiny case which wouldn’t be possible if you had to fit a CPU, northbridge, southbridge, and RAM onto the board.
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