A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.
CUDA is a proprietary and closed-source parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general-purpose processing, an approach called general-purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU). CUDA is a software layer that gives direct access to the GPU's virtual instruction set and parallel computational elements for the execution of compute kernels.
nouveau is a free and open-source graphics device driver for Nvidia video cards and the Tegra family of SoCs written by independent software engineers, with minor help from Nvidia employees.
Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), northbridge, southbridge, and memory controller onto one package. Early Tegra SoCs are designed as efficient multimedia processors. The Tegra-line evolved to emphasize performance for gaming and machine learning applications without sacrificing power efficiency, before taking a drastic shift in direction towards platforms that provide vehicular automation with the applied "Nvidia Drive" brand name on reference boards and its semiconductors; and with the "Nvidia Jetson" brand name for boards adequate for AI applications within e.g. robots or drones, and for various smart high level automation purposes.
Nvidia Ion was a product line of Nvidia Corporation intended for motherboards of low-cost portable computers. It used graphics processing units and chipsets intended for small products.
Orin is a masculine given name, sometimes spelled Orrin.
The Adam Tablet is a tablet computer designed by Bangalore-based firm Notion Ink Design Labs. The worldwide launch occurred on December 18, 2010 via a video released by Notion Ink detailing their Eden Interface. On December 9 a limited number of devices were released for pre-order globally, followed by a larger pre-order starting January 9, 2011 and an open subscription pre-order from 11 January 2011. The Adam runs a customized version of Android 2.2 Froyo, and has released beta versions of Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich The beta versions released were largely done through the efforts of volunteer developers. The Adam is set to be the first Android device marketed to contain Pixel Qi's low-power, dual-mode display. The device is one of several tablet form-factor devices to include a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor that can support 1080p video output mirroring.
The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz.
POWER8 is a family of superscalar multi-core microprocessors based on the Power ISA, announced in August 2013 at the Hot Chips conference. The designs are available for licensing under the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is the first time for such availability of IBM's highest-end processors.
The Motorola Atrix 4G is an Android-based smartphone developed by Motorola, introduced at CES 2011 along with the Motorola Xoom, Motorola Droid Bionic, and Motorola Cliq 2 on January 5, 2011. It was made available in the first quarter of 2011.
Project Denver is the codename of a central processing unit designed by Nvidia that implements the ARMv8-A 64/32-bit instruction sets using a combination of simple hardware decoder and software-based binary translation where "Denver's binary translation layer runs in software, at a lower level than the operating system, and stores commonly accessed, already optimized code sequences in a 128 MB cache stored in main memory". Denver is a very wide in-order superscalar pipeline. Its design makes it suitable for integration with other SIPs cores into one die constituting a system on a chip (SoC).
The Samsung Galaxy R (Royal) (GT-I9103) is an Android smartphone that was announced by Samsung on August 10, 2011 as a variant to the Samsung Galaxy S II.
POWER9 is a family of superscalar, multithreading, multi-core microprocessors produced by IBM, based on the Power ISA. It was announced in August 2016. The POWER9-based processors are being manufactured using a 14 nm FinFET process, in 12- and 24-core versions, for scale out and scale up applications, and possibly other variations, since the POWER9 architecture is open for licensing and modification by the OpenPOWER Foundation members.
Nvidia Tesla was the name of Nvidia's line of products targeted at stream processing or general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPU), named after pioneering electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. Its products began using GPUs from the G80 series, and have continued to accompany the release of new chips. They are programmable using the CUDA or OpenCL APIs.
NVLink is a wire-based serial multi-lane near-range communications link developed by Nvidia. Unlike PCI Express, a device can consist of multiple NVLinks, and devices use mesh networking to communicate instead of a central hub. The protocol was first announced in March 2014 and uses a proprietary high-speed signaling interconnect (NVHS).
Nvidia Drive is a computer platform by Nvidia, aimed at providing autonomous car and driver assistance functionality powered by deep learning. The platform was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2015. An enhanced version, the Drive PX 2 was introduced at CES a year later, in January 2016.
Vibrante is the name of a Linux distribution created by Nvidia and used for at least their Drive PX 2 platform series. The name is listed as a registered trademark of Nvidia. First appearances of the name were seen in about the year 2010 when it labeled some rather universal multimedia engine including audio, video and 3D building display that was in tight cooperation with Audi company. At NVidia TechDay in December 2015 the distribution was reported with version numbers 3.0 for Jetson TK1 Pro and Drive CX, and with version 4.0 for Drive CX and PX platforms. Jetson TK1 is mentioned as running with the Linux4Tegra package instead. Companies like Toradex have built and published e.g. sample application codes on top of it. Abbreviations of Vibrante Linux like V3L, V3Le or V4L with the number representing the version plus terms like L4T and assigned to certain devices can be found in some history and release docs, e.g. for Nvidia VisionWorks. On top of Vibrante it is possible to run Nvidias VisionWorks Toolkit. Vibrante is one of the targets that OpenCV4Tegra can run upon. Further there is the Nvidia PerfKit Package that copes with Vibrante.
GameFace Labs is an American technology company that develops hardware and software for the consumer virtual reality market, and was founded in 2013 by Edward Mason. The company's headquarters are in San Francisco, with international offices in London, United Kingdom.
The NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerator (NVDLA) is an open-source hardware neural network AI accelerator created by Nvidia. The accelerator is written in Verilog and is configurable and scalable to meet many different architecture needs. NVDLA is merely an accelerator and any process must be scheduled and arbitered by an outside entity such as a CPU.
Ampere is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to both the Volta and Turing architectures. It was officially announced on May 14, 2020 and is named after French mathematician and physicist André-Marie Ampère.
