NVIDIA Corporation
NVIDIA Corporation (/ɛnˈvɪdiə/, en-VID-ee-ə) is an American multinational technology company incorporated in Delaware and based in Santa Clara, California. The company was founded on April 5, 1993, by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. NVIDIA is best known for its graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets, as well as its system on a chip (SoC) units for the mobile computing and automotive market.
History of NVIDIA
NVIDIA was established with the vision of solving the market's problem of how to accelerate graphics rendering. In 1999, NVIDIA launched the GeForce 256, which it billed as the first-ever GPU. This breakthrough product integrated a transform and lighting engine, which was revolutionary at the time.
In 2006, NVIDIA introduced CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) model. CUDA allows developers to use NVIDIA GPUs for general-purpose processing, an area known as GPGPU.
Products and Technologies
GPUs
NVIDIA's most well-known product lines are its GPUs, which include:
- GeForce: Primarily designed for gaming and consumer use.
- Quadro: Targeted at professionals in industries such as engineering, design, and content creation.
- Tesla: Originally designed for scientific computing and supercomputers, now part of the NVIDIA Data Center GPUs.
- RTX: A series of high-end GPUs that support real-time ray tracing, AI, and programmable shading.
CUDA
CUDA is NVIDIA's parallel computing platform and programming model. It allows developers to accelerate compute-intensive applications by harnessing the power of GPUs. CUDA is supported by NVIDIA's entire range of modern GPUs.
Tegra
Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by NVIDIA for mobile devices. Tegra chips integrate an ARM architecture CPU, a GPU, and other essential components onto a single chip. They are used in devices like smartphones, tablets, and automotive infotainment systems.
NVIDIA Tesla
NVIDIA Tesla was initially a brand dedicated to products aimed at stream processing and high-performance computing. Tesla GPUs are used in a variety of applications including data centers, deep learning, and scientific computation. They have been integrated into supercomputers and are a key component of NVIDIA's efforts in AI.
PhysX
PhysX is a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK. NVIDIA acquired PhysX from Ageia in 2008. It is used in many video games to provide realistic physics simulations.
NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer
The NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer is a powerful desktop computer aimed at bringing supercomputer-level performance to the workstation market. It harnesses multiple Tesla GPUs to provide unparalleled computational power.
Key Figures
Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang is the co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA. Under his leadership, the company has evolved from a small graphics chip manufacturer into a global leader in AI and computing. Huang was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States as a child. He has been recognized for his vision and leadership in the tech industry.