Nvidia
NVIDIA Corporation is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles (Xbox). It is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. In 2001, it had revenues of $1.37 billion USD, rising from $735.3 million in 2000. Net income in 2001 comprised $177.1 million, up from $99.9 million.
Jen-Hsun Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded the company in January 1993 and incorporated it in California in April 1993 (later re-incorporating it in Delaware). The company remained relatively low-key until the late 1997-98 period, when it launched its line of RIVA PC graphics processors. It went public in January 1999 on Nasdaq; in May of that year it shipped its 10 millionth graphics processor. In 2000 it acquired the intellectual assets of one-time rival 3dfx, one of the biggest graphics companies of the mid to late 1990s. NVIDIA established close ties with many OEM companies as well as with organizations like SGI. By February 2002, NVIDIA had shipped 100 million processors.
NVIDIA and ATI Technologies currently supply the vast majority of graphics chips used in devices requiring real-time 3D graphics acceleration. NVidia's GeForce line of video cards, first launched in 1999, is roughly comparable to ATI's Radeon line. Unlike ATI, NVIDIA has chosen to focus on manufacturing GPU chips instead of entire graphics cards. While NVIDIA creates reference designs for their cards, and manufactures sample boards, they do not sell retail graphics cards. Their reference designs, however, minimize the effort necessary for NVIDIA's smaller partners to manufacture the physical boards for their graphics cards. NVIDIA provides the graphics chip used in the current Microsoft XBox. Microsoft has chosen ATI for the XBox 2's graphics hardware, as has Nintendo for their console to supercede the ATI-based Gamecube.
In 2003, NVIDIA launched the the way it's meant to be played program to help game developers optimize their games for NVIDIA GPUs.
In May 2004, NVIDIA launched their next generation GeForce 6800 GPU, internally known as NV40. It sports 16 pixel pipelines, an on board video processor, and new cooling system. NVIDIA's upcoming chips are the NV45 — a higher-performance version of the NV40 — and a mainstream version of the NV40 with approximately half its performance. The NV40 series is the first 3d card offering using customized chip designs for each level of performance. This is in contrast to previous generations, which either kept an identical design and lowered the number of pipelines and core speed, or reused older technology for lower-end cards.
The company provides Linux support by the way of binary graphics drivers for X11 and a thin open-source library that interfaces between the Linux kernel and the proprietary graphics software.
Graphics chipsets
- Quadro
- Riva
- GeForce
Personal computer platforms/chipsets
- nForce (AMD Athlon/Duron)
- Xbox (Intel Pentium III Celeron)
- nForce2 (AMD Athlon/Duron)
- nForce3 (AMD Athlon 64/Athlon 64 FX/AMD Opteron)
- nForce3 Mobile (AMD Athlon 64 mobo/Transmeta Crusoe)