The theory is that for every node shrink, a greater percentage of your transistors have to be dark. If you use a component too frequently, it isn't dark enough

The theory is that for every node shrink, a greater percentage of your transistors have to be dark. If you use a component too frequently, it isn't dark enough. I'll trust your statement that GPUs and image processors look a lot alike (I am no expert by any means), but as long as there is a difference an image processor is going to be a candidate for inclusion on the chip. The designers have a transistor budget, thermal constraints, and a prioritized list of components they can put on the chip given available transistors. I'm sure that if they had better alternatives, they'd skip the image processor. But they didn't, which gives you some information on how Intel thinks about image processors.