From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nvidia
Nvidia
Coordinates: 37°22′14.62″N 121°57′49.46″W /
37.3707278°N 121.9637389°W / 37.3707278; -121.9637389
Nvidia Corporation
Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara
Type Public company
Traded as NASDAQ: NVDA known GPU product line labeled "GeForce" is in direct
S&P 500 Component competition with AMD’s "Radeon" products.
Industry Specialized semiconductors In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides
parallel processing capabilities, to researchers and sci-
Founded 1993
entists, that allow them to efficiently run high-perfor-
Founder(s) Jen-Hsun Huang mance applications. They are deployed in supercomput-
Chris Malachowsky ing sites around the world.[2][3] More recently, Nvidia has
Curtis Priem moved into the mobile computing market, where its Te-
Headquarters Santa Clara, California, USA gra processors power phones and tablets, as well as auto
infotainment systems.[4][5][6] In addition to AMD, its oth-
Area served Worldwide
er competitors include Intel and Qualcomm.
Key people Jen-Hsun Huang (President, CEO)
Products Graphics processing units Graphics-card families
Chipsets
Nvidia’s product portfolio includes graphics processors,
Revenue US$3.326 billion (2010) wireless communications processors, PC platform (moth-
erboard core logic) chipsets, and digital media player
Operating income $98.945 million (2010)
software. The community of computer users arguably
Net income $67.987 million (2010) has come to know Nvidia best for its GeForce product
line, which consists of both a complete line of discrete
Total assets $3.586 billion (2010)
graphics chips found in AIB (add-in board) video cards
Total equity $2.665 billion (2010) and core graphics technology used in nForce mother-
boards, Microsoft’s original Xbox game console, and
Employees 7,000 (2011)
Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console.
Website nvidia.com The following are the most notable product families
produced by Nvidia:
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA; /ɪnˈvɪdiə/ in-vidvid-ee-ə)[1] is • GeForce
an American global technology company based in Santa • Quadro
Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics • Tegra
processors (GPUs). Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics • Tesla
Technologies (formerly ATI Technologies) have dominat- • nForce
ed the high performance GPU market, pushing other
manufacturers to smaller, niche roles. Nvidia’s best
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nvidia
Company history Microsoft chose to license a design by ATI and to make
its own manufacturing arrangements for the Xbox 360
graphics hardware, as has Nintendo for the Wii console
Founders and initial investment (which succeeds the ATI-based Nintendo GameCube).
Three people co-founded Nvidia in 1993:[7] On December 14, 2005, Nvidia acquired ULI Electron-
• Jen-Hsun Huang (As of 2008 CEO), a Taiwanese-born ics, which at the time supplied third-party southbridge
American, previously Director of CoreWare at LSI parts for chipsets to ATI, Nvidia’s competitor.[13]
Logic and a microprocessor designer at Advanced In March 2006, Nvidia acquired Hybrid Graphics[14]
Micro Devices (AMD). In December 2006, Nvidia, along with its main rival in
• Chris Malachowsky, an electrical engineer who the graphics industry AMD (which had acquired ATI), re-
worked at Sun Microsystems. ceived subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice re-
• Curtis Priem, previously a senior staff engineer and garding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card
graphics chip designer at Sun Microsystems. industry.[15]
The founders gained venture capital funding from Se- Forbes magazine named Nvidia its Company of the Year
quoia Capital.[8] for 2007, citing the accomplishments it made during the
said period as well as during the previous 5 years.[16]
Major releases and acquisitions On January 5, 2007, Nvidia announced that it had
The autumn of 1999 saw the release of the GeForce 256 completed the acquisition of PortalPlayer, Inc.[17]
(NV10), most notably introducing on-board transforma- In February 2008, Nvidia acquired Ageia Technologies
tion and lighting (T&L) to consumer-level 3D hardware. for an undisclosed sum. "The purchase reflects both com-
Running at 120 MHz and featuring four pixel pipelines, it panies’ shared goal of creating the most amazing and
implemented advanced video acceleration, motion com- captivating game experiences," said Jen-Hsun Huang,
pensation, and hardware sub-picture alpha blending. The president and CEO of Nvidia. "By combining the teams
GeForce outperformed existing products by a wide mar- that created the world’s most pervasive GPU and physics
gin. engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated
Due to the success of its products, Nvidia won the PhysX to twelve million gamers around the world."[18]
contract to develop the graphics hardware for Mi- (The press-release made no mention of the acquisition-
crosoft’s Xbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 cost nor of future plans for specific products.)
million advance. However, the project drew the time of In April 2009, a court consolidated multiple class ac-
many of Nvidia’s best engineers away from other pro- tion suits into one case, titled The Nvidia GPU Litiga-
jects. In the short term this did not matter, and the tion.[19] Nvidia agreed to replace faulty chips in or reim-
GeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000. burse purchasers who already spent to get their laptop
In 2000, Nvidia acquired the intellectual assets of its repaired. Nvidia also gave replacement laptops to many
one-time rival 3dfx, one of the biggest graphics compa- users in lieu of making a repair. The replacements and
nies of the mid- to late-1990s.[9] payments were not made until the settlement was final-
In July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undis- ized in 2011. Users were required to show proof of pur-
closed sum. Exluna made software rendering tools and chase and mail in their original faulty laptop. The chips
the personnel were merged into the Cg project. [10] were present in a number of Dell and HP laptops, as well
In August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approxi- as two Apple MacBook Pro models. Although the settle-
mately $70million.[11] ment cost Nvidia millions of dollars, many of the indi-
On April 22, 2004, Nvidia acquired iReady, a provider viduals were unhappy with the settlement, and multiple
of high performance TCP/IP and iSCSI offload solu- websites and blogs reflected this. The website entitled
tions.[12] Fair Nvidia Settlement [20] was one such site.
December 2004 saw the announcement that Nvidia On January 10, 2011, Nvidia signed a six-year cross-
would assist Sony with the design of the graphics proces- licensing agreement with Intel which marks the end of
sor (RSX) in the PlayStation 3 game console. In March all outstanding legal disputes between these two compa-
2006 it emerged that Nvidia would deliver RSX to Sony nies. According to the agreement Intel will pay Nvidia
as an IP core, and that Sony alone would organize the $1.5 billion in licensing fees payable in five annual install-
manufacture of the RSX. Under the agreement, Nvidia ments.[21]
will provide ongoing support to port the RSX to Sony’s On February 15, 2011, Nvidia announced and demon-
fabs of choice (Sony and Toshiba), as well as die shrinks strated the first quad-core processor for mobile devices
to 65 nm. This practice contrasts with Nvidia’s business at the at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This
arrangement with Microsoft, in which Nvidia managed chip is expected to ship with many tablets to be released
production and delivery of the Xbox GPU through in the second half of 2011.[22]
Nvidia’s usual third-party foundry contracts. Meanwhile,
2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nvidia
In May 2011, it was announced that Nvidia had agreed In August 2011, Nvidia predicted the growth of its
to acquire Icera, a baseband chip making company in the revenues would be 4% to 6%, instead of 4%, as analysts
UK, for $367 million in cash.[23][24] said.[29]
In September 2011, Nvidia forecast strong sales for
Documentation and drivers 2013 in the region of $4.75bn to $5bn, which surpasses
Nvidia does not publish the documentation for its hard- analysts expectations of $4.45bn.[30]
ware, meaning that programmers cannot write appropri-
ate and effective open-source drivers for Nvidia’s prod- See also
ucts (compare Graphics hardware and FOSS). Instead,
Nvidia provides its own binary GeForce graphics drivers • Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units
for X.Org and a thin open-source library that interfaces • Graphics Processing Unit
with the Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris kernels and the pro- • Nvidia demos
prietary graphics software. Nvidia also supports an ob- • GeForce
fuscated open-source driver that only supports two-di- • Nvidia Tegra
mensional hardware acceleration and ships with the • Integrated graphics
X.Org distribution. Nvidia’s Linux support has promoted • Nvidia Ion
mutual adoption in the entertainment, scientific visual- • Nvision
ization, defense and simulation/training industries, tra- • Video In Video Out (VIVO)
ditionally dominated by SGI, Evans & Sutherland, and • Molecular modeling on GPU
other relatively costly vendors.[citation needed] • Invidia
The proprietary nature of Nvidia’s drivers has gen- • List of games with Nvidia 3D Vision support
erated dissatisfaction within free-software communities. • PhysX
Some Linux and BSD users insist on using only open- • Nouveau
source drivers, and regard Nvidia’s insistence on provid- • Rambus Inc. v. Nvidia
ing nothing more than a binary-only driver as wholly in-
adequate, given that competing manufacturers (like In- References
tel) offer support and documentation for open-source de-
[1] YouTube - NVIDIA: The Way It’s Meant To Be
velopers, and that others (like ATI) release partial docu-
Played
mentation and provide some active development.[25][26]
[2] Clark, Don. "J.P. Morgan Shows Benefits from Chip
Because of the closed nature of the drivers, Nvidia
Change". WSJ Digits Blog. http://blogs.wsj.com/
video cards do not deliver adequate features on some
digits/2011/08/04/j-p-morgan-shows-benefits-
platforms and architectures (However this is credited to
from-chip-change/?mod=google_news_blog.
be due to lack of the proper kernel API needed for imple-
Retrieved 14 September 2011.
mentation). Support for three-dimensional graphics ac-
[3] "Top500 Supercomputing Sites". Top500.
celeration in Linux on the PowerPC does not exist; nor
http://www.top500.org/. Retrieved 14 September
does support for Linux on the hypervisor-restricted
2011.
PlayStation 3 console. While some users accept the
[4] Burns, Chris. "2011 The Year of NVIDIA dominating
Nvidia-supported drivers, many users of open-source
Android Superphones and tablets". SlashGear.
software would prefer better out-of-the-box perfor-
http://www.slashgear.com/2011-the-year-of-
mance if given the choice.[27]
nvidia-dominating-android-superphones-and-
However, the performance and functionality of the
tablets-03168784/. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
binary Nvidia video card drivers surpass those of open-
[5] "Tegra Super Tablets". NVIDIA.
source alternatives[citation needed] following VESA stan-
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-
dards.
supertablets.html. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
[6] "Tegra Super Phones". NVIDIA.
Sales and market trends
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-
According to a survey conducted by market watch firm superphones.html. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
Jon Peddie Research,[28] Nvidia shipped an estimated [7] "Company Info". Nvidia.com.
33.00 million graphics chips in the first quarter of 2010, http://www.nvidia.com/page/companyinfo.html.
for a market share of 31.5%. AMD and Intel shipped an Retrieved 2010-11-09.
estimated 25.15 million units (24.0% market share) and [8] Williams, Elisa (2002-04-15). "Crying wolf". Forbes.
an estimated 45.49 million units (43.5% market share) re- http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0415/
spectively. Nvidia’s year-to-year growth was 41.9%. 032_print.html. Retrieved 2009-08-10. "Huang, a
chip designer at AMD and lsi Logic, cofounded the
3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nvidia
company in 1993 with $20 million from Sequoia 11782-cambridge-coup-as-icera-goes-to-nvidia-for-
Capital and others." p225m. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
[9] Kanellos, Michael. "Nvidia buys out 3DFX". [24] "NVIDIA to Acquire Baseband and RF Technology
News.cnet.com. http://news.cnet.com/Nvidia- Leader Icera". Nvidia.
buys-out-3dfx-graphics-chip-business/ http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/
2100-1040_3-249993.html. Retrieved 2010-11-09. customrel.do?easyirid=A0D622CE9F579F09&version=live&prid=753
[10] Becker, David. "Nvidia buys out Exluna". Retrieved May 10, 2011.
News.cnet.com. http://news.cnet.com/Nvidia- [25] "X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules".
buys-software-company/2100-1040_3-945553.html. Linux Weekly News. Eklektix. 2006-08-14.
Retrieved 2010-11-09. http://lwn.net/Articles/195351/. Retrieved
[11] "Nvidia acquired MediaQ". Mediaq.com. 2008-11-03.
http://www.mediaq.com/page/home.html. [26] An overview of graphic card manufacturers and
Retrieved 2010-11-09. how well they work with Ubuntu Ubuntu Gamer,
[12] "Press Release". Nvidia.com. 2004-04-22. January 10, 2011 (Article by Luke Benstead)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_12881.html. [27] "’’LinuxQuestions.org’’ 20 September 2007".
Retrieved 2010-11-09. Linuxquestions.org.
[13] "Nvidia acquires ULI Electronics". Nvidia.com. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_28250.html. software-2/poll-do-you-install-foss-over-
Retrieved 2010-11-09. proprietary-585895/. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
[14] The Register Hardware news: Nvidia acquires Hybrid [28] "Jon Peddie Research Announces First Quarter
Graphics Shipments of PC Graphics". Business Wire.
[15] "Justice Dept. subpoenas AMD, Nvidia". New York 2010-04-26. http://www.businesswire.com/portal/
Times. 2006-12-01. Archived from the original on site/google/permalink/
2006-12-08. http://web.archive.org/web/ ?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100426006529&newsLang=en
20061208175421/http://news.zdnet.com/ Retrieved 2010-04-28.
2100-9584_22-6140041.html. [29] DON CLARK, Wall Street Journal. "Nvidia’s Profit,
[16] Brian Caulfield (2008-01-07). "Shoot to Kill". Forbes. Share Price Rise." Aug 12, 2011. Retrieved Aug 12,
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0107/ 2011.
092.html. Retrieved 2007-12-26. [30] September 7, 2011 (2011-09-07). "Nvidia shares up
[17] Press Release: Nvidia acquires PortalPlayer, dated 11 percent on $5bn sales forecast". Investoo.co.uk.
January 5, 2007. http://www.investoo.co.uk/nvidia-shares-
[18] "NVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA Technologies". up-11-percent-on-5bn-sales-forecast/. Retrieved
Nvidia.com. http://www.nvidia.com/object/ 2011-11-30.
io_1202161567170.html. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
[19] "Nvidia Settlement". nvidiasettlement.com.
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/. Retrieved
External links
2011-07-28. • Official website
[20] "Fair Nvidia Settlement". • Nvidia.com drivers download page
fairnvidiasettlement.com. • Nvidia graphics drivers manual for Xorg/Debian
http://www.fairnvidiasettlement.com/. Retrieved • GeForce.com, official gaming community site
2011-07-28.
[21] "Intel to Pay NVIDIA Technology Licensing Fees of
$1.5 Billion". http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/
customrel.do?easyirid=A0D622CE9F579F09&version=live&releasejsp=release_157&xhtml=true&prid=706607.
Retrieved 2011-01-10.
[22] "Nvidia Quad Core Mobile Processors Coming in
August". PCWorld. http://www.pcworld.com/
article/219768/
nvidia_quad_core_mobile_processors_coming_in_august.html.
Retrieved 2011-02-15.
[23] "Cambridge coup as Icera goes to NVIDIA for
£225m". Business Weekly. May 9, 2011.
http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/hi-tech/
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nvidia&oldid=473470985"
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nvidia
Categories:
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• Fabless semiconductor companies
• Companies based in Santa Clara, California
• Graphics hardware companies
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• Nvidia
• Companies listed on NASDAQ
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