Graphics processing unit (GeForce 256)
Unidad de procesamiento gráfico (GPU)
- Date
- 1999 · confidence high
- Place
- Nvidia, Santa Clara, California, United States
- Credited to
- Nvidia (Jensen Huang); GeForce 256 with hardware transform and lighting
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Chip with hundreds of cores specialised in processing pixels and vertices in parallel. Its parallel-computing power was later repurposed for science and, above all, deep learning.
Nvidia coined the term GPU in 1999; earlier graphics accelerators existed (Silicon Graphics, 3dfx, ATI).
What it led to
- Photorealistic 3D video games and the games industry as the largest entertainment sector
- Deep learning (AlexNet was trained on two GPUs)
- Nvidia's rise to become the world's most valuable company and the geopolitics of AI chips
Built on
- Microprocessor (Intel 4004)1971
- Cray-1 vector supercomputer1976
- PlayStation and 3D console gaming1994
- 3D accelerators (3dfx Voodoo)