News - NVIDIA and TSMC ship billionth GeForce GPU

[HEXUS]

Companies hit milestone after less than 12 years together.

Read more.

[Nobull]

I hope the 1,000,000,000th customer got a good prize!

[bear jesus]

I have seen this press release on multiple sites and every time i have to wonder what is meant by this "since inventing the GPU more than a decade ago" Is it supposed to mean since inventing the GeForce GPU specifically?

[Terbinator]

The article says they coined the term GPU, so they invented the GPU.

[scaryjim]

... i have to wonder what is meant by this "since inventing the GPU more than a decade ago"

The term was defined and popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second."

Not that I'm claiming Wikipedia knows everything, mind you, but it seems fairly clear...

[bear jesus]

Oh so they invented the word to describe the device, makes more sense now

I must admit i somehow scanned over the article multiple times and missed that line every time and had been taught the term for my 3dfx voodoo in the mid 90's so was very confused as to how it was meant... guess i should learn to read before i type another forum post
my bad.

[Rys]

Hmm, that means I have roughly one ten millionth of all GeForces ever made

[TooNice]

I must admit i somehow scanned over the article multiple times and missed that line every time and had been taught the term for my 3dfx voodoo in the mid 90's so was very confused as to how it was meant... guess i should learn to read before i type another forum post
my bad.

I am pretty sure that the term 3DFX coined was '3D acceleration'.

Let's go back in time a little bit: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/...ebut/page2.asp (I like the comment on polygon counts on the next page) and http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...orce/page2.asp

Maybe not the most useful term to introduce, a little bit like suddenly calling all multiGPU cards SGPU (S for Super) or something. The interesting though, is that the term stuck (we all use that term now), whereas T&L, the real innovation that came with the GeForce 256, is hardly mentioned these days.

[cameronlite]

i liked the good old days of chips with 4 nand gates

[Tarinder]

Hmm, that means I have roughly one ten millionth of all GeForces ever made

I'd thought you'd be well past 100 by now, Rys0r. I could throw a few old ones from the stock cupboard your way.