NVIDIA.com
NVIDIA
Description
The Nvidia Company was founded in the year 1993 by Curtis Priem, Chris Malachowsky and Jen-Hsun Huang, who is now the company CEO.
Today, NVIDIA Corporation is a global leader of the graphics and digital media processors manufacturing industry. The company headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California, where it manages the efforts of more than 2,000 employees worldwide. Secondary offices are spread around the world in countries on three continents: England, France, Germany, Russia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States.
The Nvidia products are designed for computing devices ranging from consumer models to the powerful professional working stations, improving the end-user experience in applications like movies, broadcasting and movie production, video games, industrial design, or medical imaging. The company manufactures media communications processors, wireless media processors and graphics processing units (MCP, WMP, GPU). These graphics and media solutions cover a large market, being incorporate in all modern platforms. Nvidia technologies are used to power PDAs, mobile phones, video consoles, notebooks, workstations and PC’s for both consumers and professionals.
The First Products
Nvidia launched the first line of graphics cards in 1995 under the NV1 name. The technology embedded in these cards was based on quadratic surfaces. They also integrated playback sound boards and input slots for video gamepads for the first time. Some video games were then ported from the Sega Saturn to the PC platform using NV1, because these games also incorporated forward-rendered quadratics. The NV1 was still on the same market as many of its direct competitors.
When the polygon based DirectX technology was first announced by Microsoft, the market lost interest in the Nvidia product. Together with Sega, Nvidia began the development of NV2, a project that consumed millions of dollars in investments but the project was finally abandoned together with the quadratic surfaces. NV2 was never again finalized.
Market interest in the product ended when Microsoft announced the DirectX specifications, based upon polygons. Subsequently NV1 development continued internally as the NV2 project, funded by several millions of dollars of investment from Sega. Sega hoped that an integrated sound and graphics chip would cut the manufacturing cost of their next console. However, even Sega eventually realized that were a flawed implementation, and the NV2 was never fully developed. he Nvidia Turnaround
After the first products failed, it was clear to all those involved that something had to change. That change came along with David Kirk, hired from Crystal Dynamics as Chief Scientist. He introduced the idea of combining image rendering implementation with 3D hardware technology. New Nvidia products were designed to have a full support for the new Microsoft DirectX. The manufacturing costs for these products were considerably reduced by sacrificing some of the multimedia functionality so that regular consumers could afford the new Nvidia product line.
As a result of these perspective changes, the company set out to reach a goal of product cycle. This meant that no bad product was ever going to jeopardize the stability of the company, with a new generation of products always available. The Riva 128
Along with other ample changes in the company policy, many employees were laid off. This appeared to the world as a lack of action in the research and development sector for the company. When Nvidia announced their new Riva 128 in 1997, this surprised the whole world. The announced specifications surpassed those of any market competitors and the costs were so low that large volumes of the new card were instantly shipped and Riva 128 became a popular success.
Nvidia Products
Currently, Nvidia manufactures and sells a large array of Graphics chipsets from the GeForce line for desktop graphics solutions to the Quadro GPUs for high quality workstation solutions and GoForce products used in PDAs, Smartphones, and mobile phones. Nvidia GPUs also power the graphics inside games consoles like the Xbox or the Playstation 3. The Nvidia product line also includes personal computer chipsets based on the Nvidia nForce platforms.
Languages
English
Address
- 2721 San Tomas Express Way
- Santa Clara CA 95050 US
Contact
- nVidia
-
- +1 408 615 2519, Fax: +1 408 615 2800
Additional Information
- http://www.nvidia.com
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVIDIA
- http://www.computerhope.com
- http://www.slizone.com
- http://www.nzone.com
Related Domains
External Links
- Stock: NVDA
- Alexa: Nvidia.com
