Nvidia Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It is a software and fabless company which designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing, as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is also a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software.
A graphics card is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a display device such as a monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to an integrated graphics processor on the motherboard or the central processing unit (CPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) that performs the necessary computations is the main component in a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to erroneously refer to the graphics card as a whole.
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, and adding hardware motion compensation for MPEG-2 video. It offered a notable leap in 3D PC gaming performance and was the first fully Direct3D 7-compliant 3D accelerator.
The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer Nvidia.
A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term "software engine" used more widely in the software industry.
Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to:
3dfx Interactive, Inc. was an American computer hardware company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s to 2000.
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
Proof of concept, also known as proof of principle, is a realization of a certain idea, method or principle in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or viability, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has practical potential. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete.
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.
The Nvidia NV1, manufactured by SGS-Thomson Microelectronics under the model name STG2000, was a multimedia PCI card announced in May 1995 and released in November 1995. It was sold to retail by Diamond as the Diamond Edge 3D.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as part of the Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
High-dynamic-range rendering, also known as high-dynamic-range lighting, is the rendering of computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in high dynamic range (HDR). This allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios. Video games and computer-generated movies and special effects benefit from this as it creates more realistic scenes than with more simplistic lighting models.
Ray-tracing hardware is special-purpose computer hardware designed for accelerating ray tracing calculations.
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Rage design. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R100" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.
Larrabee is the codename for a cancelled GPGPU chip that Intel was developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. It is named after either Mount Larrabee or Larrabee State Park in the state of Washington. The chip was to be released in 2010 as the core of a consumer 3D graphics card, but these plans were cancelled due to delays and disappointing early performance figures. The project to produce a GPU retail product directly from the Larrabee research project was terminated in May 2010 and its technology was passed on to the Xeon Phi. The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing.
Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams the game's output directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game remotely from a cloud. It contrasts with traditional means of gaming, wherein a game is run locally on a user's video game console, personal computer, or mobile device.
Luminous Engine, originally called Luminous Studio, is a multi-platform game engine developed and used internally by Square Enix and later on by Luminous Productions. The engine was developed for and targeted at eighth-generation hardware and DirectX 11-compatible platforms, such as Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and versions of Microsoft Windows. It was conceived during the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 to be compatible with next generation consoles that their existing platform, Crystal Tools, could not handle.
Nvidia RTX is a professional visual computing platform created by Nvidia, primarily used in workstations for designing complex large-scale models in architecture and product design, scientific visualization, energy exploration, and film and video production, as well as being used in mainstream PCs for gaming.
