it can't very well go to Intel given the amount of competition they are engaged in
That's not the reason. Intel's fabs are at capacity producing chips with much higher margins than GPUs. Check the price per die area on Geforce card vs. the CPU that goes on the same motherboard, and then remember that the video card is assembled and stuffed (with a ton of DRAM) and board tested where the CPU just has to be packaged and shipped. The economics simply wouldn't allow it even if Intel wanted to play.
Erm, you're off by a process node. Haswell is produced at 22nm, not 28nm, and its due for public release in 2013. However, Ivy Bridge is also produced on 22nm and that's the one that will be coming out in a few months.
That's still a half node[1] ahead, but this is mostly a matter of Intel in specific rather than CPU manufacturers in general being fast to adopt more advanced process nodes.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-node#Half-shrink
That's not the reason. Intel's fabs are at capacity producing chips with much higher margins than GPUs. Check the price per die area on Geforce card vs. the CPU that goes on the same motherboard, and then remember that the video card is assembled and stuffed (with a ton of DRAM) and board tested where the CPU just has to be packaged and shipped. The economics simply wouldn't allow it even if Intel wanted to play.