Nvidia's professional line of GPUs are used foredge-to-cloud computing and insupercomputers andworkstations for applications in fields such as architecture, engineering and construction, media and entertainment, automotive, scientific research, and manufacturing design.[10] ItsGeForce line of GPUs are aimed at the consumer market and are used in applications such asvideo editing,3D rendering, andPC gaming. With a market share of 80.2% in the second quarter of 2023,[11] Nvidia leads global sales of discrete desktop GPUs by a wide margin. The company expanded its presence in the gaming industry with the introduction of theShield Portable (ahandheld game console),Shield Tablet (agaming tablet), andShield TV (adigital media player), as well as its cloud gaming serviceGeForce Now.[12]
In addition to GPU design and outsourcing manufacturing, Nvidia provides theCUDA software platform and API that allows the creation of massivelyparallel programs which utilize GPUs.[13][14] They are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world.[15][16] In the late 2000s, Nvidia had moved into the mobile computing market, where it producedTegra mobile processors for smartphones and tablets and vehicle navigation and entertainment systems.[17][18][19] Its competitors includeAMD,Intel,[20]Qualcomm,[21] andAI accelerator companies such asCerebras andGraphcore. It also makes AI-powered software for audio and video processing (e.g.,Nvidia Maxine).[22]
Nvidia's attempt to acquireArm fromSoftBank in September 2020 failed to materialize following extended regulatory scrutiny, leading to the termination of the deal in February 2022 in what would have been the largest semiconductor acquisition.[23][24] In 2023, Nvidia became the seventh public U.S. company to bevalued at over $1 trillion,[25] and the company's valuation has increased rapidly since then amid growing demand for data center chips with AI capabilities in the midst of theAI boom.[26][27] In June 2024, for one day, Nvidia overtookMicrosoft as the world'smost valuable publicly traded company, with amarket capitalization of over $3.3 trillion.[28]
TheDenny's roadside diner inSan Jose, California, where Nvidia's three co-founders agreed to start the company in late 1992Nvidia's former headquarters which was home to the company through most of its pre-AI period (still in use)Aerial view of Endeavor, the first of the two new Nvidia headquarters buildings, inSanta Clara, California, in 2017.Apple Park is visible in the distance.Entrance of Endeavor headquarters building in 2018
At the time, Malachowsky and Priem were frustrated with Sun's management and were looking to leave, but Huang was on "firmer ground",[38] in that he was already running his own division at LSI.[35] The three co-founders discussed a vision of the future which was so compelling that Huang decided to leave LSI[38] and become the chief executive officer of their new startup.[35]
The three co-founders envisioned graphics-based processing as the best trajectory for tackling challenges that had eluded general-purpose computing methods.[38] As Huang later explained: "We also observed that video games were simultaneously one of the most computationally challenging problems and would have incredibly high sales volume. Those two conditions don't happen very often. Video games was ourkiller app — a flywheel to reach large markets funding huge R&D to solve massive computational problems."[38]
The first problem was who would quit first. Huang's wife, Lori, did not want him to resign from LSI unless Malachowsky resigned from Sun at the same time, and Malachowsky's wife, Melody, felt the same way about Huang.[39] Priem broke that deadlock by resigning first from Sun, effective December 31, 1992.[39] According to Priem, this put pressure on Huang and Malachowsky to not leave him to "flail alone", so they gave notice too.[40] Huang left LSI and "officially joined Priem on February 17", which was also Huang's 30th birthday, while Malachowsky left Sun in early March.[40] In early 1993, the three founders began working together on their new startup in Priem's townhouse inFremont, California.[41]
With $40,000 in the bank, the company was born.[38] The company subsequently received $20 million of venture capital funding fromSequoia Capital,Sutter Hill Ventures and others.[42]
During the late 1990s, Nvidia was one of 70 startup companies pursuing the idea that graphics acceleration for video games was the path to the future.[34] Only two survived: Nvidia andATI Technologies, the latter of which merged into AMD.[34]
Nvidia initially had no name.[43] Priem's first idea was "Primal Graphics", asyllabic abbreviation of two of the founders' last names, but that left out Huang.[43] They soon discovered it was impossible to create a workable name with syllables from all three founders' names, after considering "Huaprimal", "Prihuamal", "Malluapri", etc.[43] The next idea came from Priem's idea for the name of Nvidia's first product.[43] Priem originally wanted to call it the "GXNV", as in the "next version" of the GX graphics chips which he had worked on at Sun.[41] Then Huang told Priem to "drop the GX", resulting in the name "NV".[41] Priem made a list of words with the letters "NV" in them.[43] At one point, Malachowsky and Priem wanted to call the company NVision, but that name was already taken by a manufacturer of toilet paper.[35] Both Priem[43] and Huang have taken credit for coming up with the name Nvidia,[35] from "invidia", the Latin word for "envy".[38]
After the company outgrew Priem's townhouse, its original headquarters office was inSunnyvale, California.[38]
Nvidia's first graphics accelerator, theNV1, was designed to processquadrilateralprimitives (forward texture mapping), a feature that set it apart from competitors, who preferred triangle primitives.[35] However, whenMicrosoft introduced theDirectX platform, it chose not to support any other graphics software and announced that itsDirect3D API would exclusively support triangles.[35][44] As a result, the NV1 failed to gain traction in the market.[45]
Nvidia had also entered into a partnership withSega to supply the graphics chip for theDreamcast console and worked on the project for about a year. However, Nvidia's technology was already lagging behind competitors. This placed the company in a difficult position: continue working on a chip that was likely doomed to fail or abandon the project, risking financial collapse.[46]
In a pivotal moment, Sega's president,Shoichiro Irimajiri, visited Huang in person to inform him that Sega had decided to choose another vendor for the Dreamcast. However, Irimajiri believed in Nvidia's potential and persuaded Sega's management to invest $5 million into the company. Huang later reflected that this funding was all that kept Nvidia afloat, and that Irimajiri's "understanding and generosity gave us six months to live".[46]
In 1996, Huang laid off more than half of Nvidia's employees—thereby reducing headcount from 100 to 40—and focused the company's remaining resources on developing a graphics accelerator product optimized for processing triangle primitives: theRIVA 128.[35][44] By the time the RIVA 128 was released in August 1997, Nvidia had only enough money left for one month's payroll.[35] The sense of impending failure became so pervasive that it gave rise to Nvidia's unofficial company motto: "Our company is thirty days from going out of business."[35] Huang began internal presentations to Nvidia staff with those words for many years.[35]
Nvidia sold about a million RIVA 128 units within four months,[35] and used the revenue to fund development of its next generation of products.[44] In 1998, the release of theRIVA TNT helped solidify Nvidia's reputation as a leader in graphics technology.[47]
Nvidia went public on January 22, 1999.[48][49][50] Investing in Nvidia after it had already failed to deliver on its contract turned out to be Irimajiri's best decision as Sega's president. After Irimajiri left Sega in 2000, Sega sold its Nvidia stock for $15 million.[46]
In late 1999, Nvidia released theGeForce 256 (NV10), its first product expressly marketed as a GPU, which was most notable for introducing onboardtransformation and lighting (T&L) to consumer-level 3D hardware. Running at 120 MHz and featuring four-pixel pipelines, it implemented advanced video acceleration,motion compensation, and hardware sub-picturealpha blending. The GeForce outperformed existing products by a wide margin.
Due to the success of its products, Nvidia won the contract to develop the graphics hardware forMicrosoft'sXbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 million advance. However, the project took many of its best engineers away from other projects. In the short term this did not matter, and theGeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000. In December 2000, Nvidia reached an agreement to acquire the intellectual assets of its one-time rival3dfx, a pioneer in consumer 3D graphics technology leading the field from the mid-1990s until 2000.[51][52] The acquisition process was finalized in April 2002.[53]
In 2001,Standard & Poor's selected Nvidia to replace the departingEnron in the S&P 500 stock index, meaning that index funds would need to hold Nvidia shares going forward.[54]
In July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undisclosed sum. Exluna made software-rendering tools and the personnel were merged into the Cg project.[55] In August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approximately US$70 million.[56] It launchedGoForce the following year. On April 22, 2004, Nvidia acquired iReady, also a provider of high-performanceTCP offload engines andiSCSI controllers.[57] In December 2004, it was announced that Nvidia would assistSony with the design of the graphics processor (RSX) for thePlayStation 3 game console. On December 14, 2005, Nvidia acquiredULI Electronics, which at the time supplied third-partysouthbridge parts forchipsets toATI, Nvidia's competitor.[58] In March 2006, Nvidia acquiredHybrid Graphics.[59] In December 2006, Nvidia, along with its main rival in the graphics industry AMD (which had acquired ATI), received subpoenas from theU.S. Department of Justice regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry.[60]
Forbes named Nvidia itsCompany of the Year for 2007, citing the accomplishments it made during the said period as well as during the previous five years.[61] On January 5, 2007, Nvidia announced that it had completed the acquisition ofPortalPlayer, Inc.[62] In February 2008, Nvidia acquiredAgeia, developer ofPhysX, aphysics engine andphysics processing unit. Nvidia announced that it planned to integrate the PhysX technology into its futureGPU products.[63][64]
In July 2008, Nvidia took a write-down of approximately $200 million on its first-quarter revenue, after reporting that certain mobile chipsets and GPUs produced by the company had "abnormal failure rates" due to manufacturing defects. Nvidia, however, did not reveal the affected products. In September 2008, Nvidia became the subject of aclass action lawsuit over the defects, claiming that the faulty GPUs had been incorporated into certain laptop models manufactured byApple Inc.,Dell, andHP. In September 2010, Nvidia reached a settlement, in which it would reimburse owners of the affected laptops for repairs or, in some cases, replacement.[65][66] On January 10, 2011, Nvidia signed a six-year, $1.5 billion cross-licensing agreement with Intel, ending all litigation between the two companies.[67]
In November 2011, after initially unveiling it atMobile World Congress, Nvidia released itsARM-basedsystem on a chip for mobile devices,Tegra 3. Nvidia claimed that the chip featured the first-ever quad-core mobile CPU.[68][69] In May 2011, it was announced that Nvidia had agreed to acquireIcera, a baseband chip making company in the UK, for $367 million.[70] In January 2013, Nvidia unveiled theTegra 4, as well as theNvidia Shield, anAndroid-basedhandheld game console powered by the new system on a chip.[71] On July 29, 2013, Nvidia announced that they acquiredPGI from STMicroelectronics.[72]
In February 2013, Nvidia announced its plans to build a new headquarters in the form of two giant triangle-shaped buildings on the other side of San Tomas Expressway (to the west of its existing headquarters complex). The company selected triangles as its design theme. As Huang explained in a blog post, the triangle is "the fundamental building block of computer graphics".[73]
In 2014, Nvidia ported theValve gamesPortal andHalf Life 2 to itsNvidia Shield tablet as Lightspeed Studio.[74][75] Since 2014, Nvidia has diversified its business focusing on three markets: gaming, automotive electronics, and mobile devices.[76]
That same year, Nvidia also prevailed in litigation brought by the trustee of 3dfx's bankruptcy estate to challenge its 2000 acquisition of 3dfx's intellectual assets. On November 6, 2014, in an unpublished memorandum order, theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the "district court's judgment affirming the bankruptcy court's determination that [Nvidia] did not pay less than fair market value for assets purchased from 3dfx shortly before 3dfx filed for bankruptcy".[77]
On May 6, 2016, Nvidia unveiled the first GPUs of theGeForce 10 series, the GTX 1080 and 1070, based on the company's newPascal microarchitecture. Nvidia claimed that both models outperformed itsMaxwell-based Titan X model; the models incorporate GDDR5X andGDDR5 memory respectively, and use a 16 nm manufacturing process. The architecture also supports a new hardware feature known as simultaneous multi-projection (SMP), which is designed to improve the quality of multi-monitor andvirtual reality rendering.[78][79][80] Laptops that include these GPUs and are sufficiently thin – as of late 2017, under 0.8 inches (20 mm) – have been designated as meeting Nvidia's "Max-Q" design standard.[81]
In July 2016, Nvidia agreed to a settlement for a false advertising lawsuit regarding itsGTX 970 model, as the models were unable to use all of their advertised 4 GB of VRAM due to limitations brought by the design of its hardware.[82] In May 2017, Nvidia announced a partnership withToyota which would use Nvidia'sDrive PX-series artificial intelligence platform for its autonomous vehicles.[83] In July 2017, Nvidia and Chinese search giantBaidu announced a far-reaching AI partnership that includes cloud computing, autonomous driving, consumer devices, and Baidu's open-source AI framework PaddlePaddle. Baidu unveiled that Nvidia's Drive PX 2 AI will be the foundation of its autonomous-vehicle platform.[84]
Nvidia officially released the Titan V on December 7, 2017.[85][86]
Nvidia officially released the Nvidia Quadro GV100 on March 27, 2018.[87] Nvidia officially released the RTX 2080 GPUs on September 27, 2018. In 2018,Google announced that Nvidia's Tesla P4 graphic cards would be integrated into Google Cloud service's artificial intelligence.[88]
In May 2018, on the Nvidia user forum, a thread was started[89] asking the company to update users when they would release web drivers for its cards installed on legacyMac Pro machines up tomid-2012 5,1 running themacOS Mojave operating system 10.14.Web drivers are required to enable graphics acceleration and multipledisplay monitor capabilities of the GPU. On its Mojave update info website, Apple stated that macOS Mojave would run on legacy machines with 'Metal compatible' graphics cards[90] and listed Metal compatible GPUs, including some manufactured by Nvidia.[91] However, this list did not include Metal compatible cards that currently work inmacOS High Sierra using Nvidia-developed web drivers. In September, Nvidia responded, "Apple fully controls drivers for macOS. But if Apple allows, our engineers are ready and eager to help Apple deliver great drivers for macOS 10.14 (Mojave)."[92] In October, Nvidia followed this up with another public announcement, "Apple fully controls drivers for macOS. Unfortunately, Nvidia currently cannot release a driver unless it is approved by Apple,"[93] suggesting a possible rift between the two companies.[94] By January 2019, with still no sign of the enabling web drivers,Apple Insider weighed into the controversy with a claim that Apple management "doesn't want Nvidia support in macOS".[95] The following month, Apple Insider followed this up with another claim that Nvidia support was abandoned because of "relational issues in the past",[96] and that Apple was developing its own GPU technology.[97] Without Apple-approved Nvidia web drivers, Apple users are faced with replacing their Nvidia cards with a competing supported brand, such asAMD Radeon from the list recommended by Apple.[98]
On March 11, 2019, Nvidia announced a deal to buy Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion[99] to substantially expand its footprint in the high-performance computing market. In May 2019, Nvidia announced new RTX Studio laptops. The creators say that the new laptop is going to be seven times faster than a top-end MacBook Pro with aCore i9 and AMD'sRadeon Pro Vega 20 graphics in apps likeMaya and RedCine-X Pro.[100] In August 2019, Nvidia announcedMinecraft RTX, an official Nvidia-developed patch for the gameMinecraft adding real-time DXR ray tracing exclusively to the Windows 10 version of the game. The whole game is, in Nvidia's words, "refit" withpath tracing, which dramatically affects the way light, reflections, and shadows work inside the engine.[101]
In May 2020, Nvidia announced it was acquiringCumulus Networks.[102] Post acquisition the company was absorbed into Nvidia's networking business unit, along withMellanox.
In May 2020, Nvidia's developed anopen-sourceventilator to address the shortage resulting from the globalcoronavirus pandemic.[103] On May 14, 2020, Nvidia officially announced their Ampere GPU microarchitecture and the Nvidia A100 GPU accelerator.[104][105] In July 2020, it was reported that Nvidia was in talks withSoftBank to buyArm, a UK-based chip designer, for $32 billion.[106]
On September 1, 2020, Nvidia officially announced theGeForce 30 series based on the company's newAmpere microarchitecture.[107][108]
On September 13, 2020, Nvidia announced that they would buy Arm from SoftBank Group for $40 billion, subject to the usual scrutiny, with the latter retaining a 10% share of Nvidia.[109][110][111][112]
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, part of theRTX 20 series, which is the first generation ofNvidia RTX
In October 2020, Nvidia announced its plan to build the most powerful computer inCambridge, England. The computer, called Cambridge-1, launched in July 2021 with a $100 million investment and will employ AI to supporthealthcare research.[113][114] According to Jensen Huang, "The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a hub of innovation for the UK, and further the groundbreaking work being done by the nation's researchers in critical healthcare and drug discovery."[115]
Also in October 2020, along with the release of theNvidia RTX A6000, Nvidia announced it is retiring its workstation GPU brand Quadro, shifting its product name to Nvidia RTX for future products and the manufacturing to beNvidia Ampere architecture-based.[10]
In August 2021, the proposed takeover of Arm was stalled after the UK'sCompetition and Markets Authority raised "significant competition concerns".[116] In October 2021, theEuropean Commission opened a competition investigation into the takeover. The Commission stated that Nvidia's acquisition could restrict competitors' access to Arm's products and provide Nvidia with too much internal information on its competitors due to their deals with Arm. SoftBank (the parent company of Arm) and Nvidia announced in early February 2022 that they "had agreed not to move forward with the transaction 'because of significant regulatory challenges'".[117] The investigation is set to end on March 15, 2022.[118][119] That same month, Nvidia was reportedly compromised by a cyberattack.[120]
In March 2022, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang mentioned that they are open to having Intel manufacture their chips in the future.[121] This was the first time the company mentioned that they would work together with Intel's upcoming foundry services.
In April 2022, it was reported that Nvidia planned to open a new research center inYerevan, Armenia.[122]
In May 2022, Nvidia opened Voyager, the second of the two giant buildings at its new headquarters complex to the west of the old one. Unlike its smaller and older sibling Endeavor, the triangle theming is used more "sparingly" in Voyager.[123][124]
In September 2022, Nvidia announced its next-generation automotive-grade chip,Drive Thor.[125][126]
FollowingU.S. Department of Commerce regulations which placed anembargo on exports to China of advanced microchips, which went into effect in October 2022, Nvidia saw its data center chip added to the export control list. The next month, the company unveiled a new advanced chip in China, called the A800 GPU, that met the export control rules.[128]
In September 2023,Getty Images announced that it was partnering with Nvidia to launch Generative AI by Getty Images, a new tool that lets people create images using Getty's library of licensed photos. Getty will use Nvidia's Edify model, which is available on Nvidia'sgenerative AI model library Picasso.[129]
On September 26, 2023, Denny's CEOKelli Valade joined Huang in East San Jose to celebrate the founding of Nvidia at Denny's on Berryessa Road, where a plaque was installed to mark the relevant corner booth as the birthplace of a $1 trillion company.[35][130] By then, Nvidia'sH100 GPUs were in such demand that even othertech giants were beholden to how Nvidia allocated supply.Larry Ellison ofOracle Corporation said that month that during a dinner with Huang atNobu inPalo Alto, he andElon Musk ofTesla, Inc. andxAI "were begging" for H100s, "I guess is the best way to describe it. An hour of sushi and begging".[131]
In October 2023, it was reported that Nvidia had quietly begun designingARM-based central processing units (CPUs) for Microsoft'sWindows operating system with a target to start selling them in 2025.[132]
In January 2024,Forbes reported that Nvidia has increased its lobbying presence in Washington, D.C. as American lawmakers consider proposals toregulate artificial intelligence. From 2023 to 2024, the company reportedly hired at least four government affairs with professional backgrounds at agencies including the United States Department of State and the Department of the Treasury. It was noted that the $350,000 spent by the company on lobbying in 2023 was small compared to a number of major tech companies in the artificial intelligence space.[133]
As of January 2024,Raymond James Financial analysts estimated that Nvidia was selling the H100 GPU in the price range of $25,000 to $30,000 each, while oneBay, individual H100s cost over $40,000.[134] Tech giants were purchasing tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs for their data centers to rungenerative artificial intelligence projects; simple arithmetic implied that they were committing to billions of dollars in capital expenditures.[134]
In February 2024, it was reported that Nvidia was the "hot employer" in Silicon Valley because it was offering interesting work and good pay at a time when other tech employers were downsizing. Half of Nvidia employees earned over $228,000 in 2023.[135] By then, Nvidia GPUs had become so valuable that they needed special security while in transit to data centers.Cisco chief information officer Fletcher Previn explained at a CIO summit: "Those GPUs arrive by armored car".[136]
On March 1, 2024, Nvidia became the third company in the history of the United States to close with a market capitalization in excess of $2 trillion.[54] Nvidia needed only 180 days to get to $2 trillion from $1 trillion, while the first two companies,Apple and Microsoft, each took over 500 days.[54] On March 18, Nvidia announced its new AI chip and microarchitectureBlackwell, named after mathematicianDavid Blackwell.[137]
In April 2024, Reuters reported that China had allegedly acquired banned Nvidia chips and servers fromSupermicro and Dell via tenders.[138]
PNY Nvidia Quadro P1000
In June 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department (DOJ) began antitrust investigations into Nvidia, Microsoft andOpenAI, focusing on their influence in the AI industry. The FTC led the investigations into Microsoft and OpenAI, while the DOJ handled Nvidia. The probes centered on the companies' conduct rather than mergers. This development followed an open letter from OpenAI employees expressing concerns about therapid AI advancements and lack of oversight.[139]
The company became the world's most valuable, surpassing Microsoft and Apple, on June 18, 2024, after its market capitalization exceeded $3.3 trillion.[140][141]
In June 2024,Trend Micro announced a partnership with Nvidia to develop AI-driven security tools, notably to protect the data centers where AI workloads are processed. This collaboration integrates Nvidia NIM and Nvidia Morpheus with Trend Vision One and its Sovereign and Private Cloud solutions to improve data privacy, real-time analysis, and rapid threat mitigation.[142]
Nvidia introduced a family of open-sourcemultimodal large language models in October 2024 called NVLM 1.0, which features a flagship version with 72 billion parameters, designed to improve text-only performance after multimodal training.[143][144]
In November 2024,Morgan Stanley reported that "the entire 2025 production" of all of Nvidia's Blackwell chips was "already sold out".[147]
Also in November 2024, the company bought 1.2 million shares ofNebius Group.[148]
Nvidia was ranked #3 on Forbes' "Best Places to Work" list in 2024.[149]
In January 2025, Nvidia saw the largest one-day loss in market capitalization for a U.S. company in history at $600 billion. This was due toDeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that developed an advanced AI model at a lower cost and computing power.[150] DeepSeek's AI assistant, using the V3 model, surpassed ChatGPT as the highest-rated free app in the U.S. onApple'sApp Store.[151][152]
Nvidiauses external suppliers for all phases of manufacturing, including wafer fabrication, assembly, testing, and packaging. Nvidia thus avoids most of the investment and production costs and risks associated with chip manufacturing, although it does sometimes directly procure some components and materials used in the production of its products (e.g., memory and substrates). Nvidia focuses its own resources on product design, quality assurance, marketing, and customer support.[8][9]
For the fiscal year 2020, Nvidia reported earnings of US$2.796 billion, with an annual revenue of US$10.918 billion, a decline of 6.8% over the previous fiscal cycle. Nvidia's shares traded at over $531 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over US$328.7 billion in January 2021. As of late Q3 2024, Nvidia's market cap is around US$2.98 trillion.[156][157]
For the Q2 of 2020, Nvidia reported sales of $3.87 billion, which was a 50% rise from the same period in 2019. The surge in sales and people's higher demand for computer technology. According to the financial chief of the company, Colette Kress, the effects of the pandemic will "likely reflect this evolution in enterprise workforce trends with a greater focus on technologies, such as Nvidia laptops and virtual workstations, that enable remote work and virtual collaboration."[158] In May 2023, Nvidia crossed $1 trillion in market valuation during trading hours,[159] and grew to $1.2 trillion by the following November.[160] For its strength, size and market capitalization, Nvidia has been selected to be one of Bloomberg's "Magnificent Seven", the seven biggest companies on the stock market in these regards.
Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is a series of technical conferences held around the world.[161] It originated in 2009 in San Jose, California, with an initial focus on the potential for solving computing challenges through GPUs.[162] In recent years, the conference's focus has shifted to various applications of artificial intelligence anddeep learning; includingself-driving cars, healthcare,high-performance computing, and Nvidia Deep Learning Institute (DLI) training.[163] GTC 2018 attracted over 8400 attendees.[161] GTC 2020 was converted to a digital event and drew roughly 59,000 registrants.[164] After several years of remote-only events, GTC in March 2024 returned to an in-person format in San Jose, California.[165]
Drive, a range of hardware and software products for designers and manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. TheDrive PX-series is a high-performance computer platform aimed at autonomous driving through deep learning,[166] while Driveworks is an operating system fordriverless cars.[167]
Until September 23, 2013, Nvidia had not published any documentation for its advanced hardware,[173] meaning that programmers could not writefree and open-sourcedevice driver for its products without resorting toreverse engineering.
Instead, Nvidia provides its own binary GeForce graphics drivers forX.Org and an open-source library that interfaces with theLinux,FreeBSD orSolaris kernels and the proprietary graphics software. Nvidia also provided but stopped supporting an obfuscated open-source driver that only supports two-dimensional hardware acceleration and ships with the X.Org distribution.[174]
The proprietary nature of Nvidia's drivers has generated dissatisfaction withinfree-software communities. In a 2012 talk,Linus Torvalds, in criticism of Nvidia's approach towards Linux, raised the finger and stated "Nvidia, fuck you."[175][176] Some Linux and BSD users insist on using only open-source drivers and regard Nvidia's insistence on providing nothing more than a binary-only driver as inadequate, given that competing manufacturers such asIntel offer support and documentation foropen-source developers and that others (likeAMD) release partial documentation and provide some active development.[177][178]
Nvidia only provides x86/x64 and ARMv7-A versions of their proprietary driver; as a result, features likeCUDA are unavailable on other platforms.[179] Some users claim that Nvidia's Linux drivers impose artificial restrictions, like limiting the number of monitors that can be used at the same time, but the company has not commented on these accusations.[180]
In 2014, with Maxwell GPUs, Nvidia started to require firmware by them to unlock all features of its graphics cards.[181][182][183]
On May 12, 2022, Nvidia announced that they are opensourcing their GPU kernel modules.[184][185][186] Support for Nvidia's firmware was implemented in nouveau in 2023, which allows proper power management and GPU reclocking for Turing and newer graphics card generations.[187][188]
Nvidia GPUs are used indeep learning, and accelerated analytics due to Nvidia'sCUDA software platform and API which allows programmers to utilize the higher number of cores present in GPUs toparallelizeBLAS operations which are extensively used inmachine learning algorithms.[14] They were included in many Tesla, Inc. vehicles before Musk announced at Tesla Autonomy Day in 2019 that the company developed its own SoC and full self-driving computer now and would stop using Nvidia hardware for their vehicles.[189][190] These GPUs are used by researchers, laboratories, tech companies and enterprise companies.[191] In 2009, Nvidia was involved in what was called the "big bang" of deep learning, "as deep-learning neural networks were combined with Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs)".[192] That year, theGoogle Brain team used Nvidia GPUs to createdeep neural networks capable of machine learning, whereAndrew Ng determined that GPUs could increase the speed of deep learning systems by about 100 times.[193]
In April 2016, Nvidia produced theDGX-1 based on an 8 GPU cluster, to improve the ability of users to use deep learning by combining GPUs with integrated deep learning software.[194] Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 toOpenAI in August 2016 to help it train larger and more complex AI models with the capability of reducing processing time from six days to two hours.[195][196] It also developed Nvidia Tesla K80 and P100 GPU-based virtual machines, which are available throughGoogle Cloud, which Google installed in November 2016.[197]Microsoft added GPU servers in a preview offering of its N series based on Nvidia's Tesla K80s, each containing 4992 processing cores. Later that year, AWS's P2 instance was produced using up to 16 Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs. That month Nvidia also partnered with IBM to create a software kit that boosts the AI capabilities ofWatson,[198] called IBM PowerAI.[199][200] Nvidia also offers its own Nvidia Deep Learning software development kit.[201] In 2017, the GPUs were also brought online at theRiken Center for Advanced Intelligence Project forFujitsu.[202] The company's deep learning technology led to a boost in its 2017 earnings.[203]
In May 2018, researchers at the artificial intelligence department of Nvidia realized the possibility that a robot can learn to perform a job simply by observing the person doing the same job. They have created a system that, after a short revision and testing, can already be used to control the universal robots of the next generation. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications.[204]
In 2020, Nvidia unveiled "Omniverse", a virtual environment designed for engineers.[205] Nvidia also open-sourced Isaac Sim, which makes use of this Omniverse to train robots through simulations that mimic the physics of the robots and the real world.[206][207]
Nvidia'sInception Program was created to support startups making exceptional advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and data science. Award winners are announced at Nvidia's GTC Conference. In May 2017, the program had 1,300 companies.[210] As of March 2018, there were 2,800 startups in the Inception Program.[211] As of August 2021, the program has surpassed 8,500 members in 90 countries, with cumulative funding of US$60 billion.[212]
Issues with the GeForce GTX 970's specifications were first brought up by users when they found out that the cards, while featuring 4 GB of memory, rarely accessed memory over the 3.5 GB boundary. Further testing and investigation eventually led to Nvidia issuing a statement that the card's initially announced specifications had been altered without notice before the card was made commercially available, and that the card took a performance hit once memory over the 3.5 GB limit were put into use.[213][214][215]
The card's back-end hardware specifications, initially announced as being identical to those of the GeForce GTX 980, differed in the amount of L2 cache (1.75 MB versus 2 MB in the GeForce GTX 980) and the number of ROPs (56 versus 64 in the 980). Additionally, it was revealed that the card was designed to access its memory as a 3.5 GB section, plus a 0.5 GB one, access to the latter being 7 times slower than the first one.[216] The company then went on to promise a specific driver modification to alleviate the performance issues produced by the cutbacks suffered by the card.[217] However, Nvidia later clarified that the promise had been a miscommunication and there would be no specific driver update for the GTX 970.[218] Nvidia claimed that it would assist customers who wanted refunds in obtaining them.[219] On February 26, 2015, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang went on record in Nvidia's official blog to apologize for the incident.[220] In February 2015 a class-action lawsuit alleging false advertising was filed against Nvidia and Gigabyte Technology in theU.S. District Court for Northern California.[221][222]
Nvidia revealed that it is able to disable individual units, each containing 256 KB of L2 cache and 8 ROPs, without disabling whole memory controllers.[223] This comes at the cost of dividing the memory bus into high speed and low speed segments that cannot be accessed at the same time unless one segment is reading while the other segment is writing because the L2/ROP unit managing both of the GDDR5 controllers shares the read return channel and the write data bus between the two GDDR5 controllers and itself.[223] This is used in the GeForce GTX 970, which therefore can be described as having 3.5 GB in its high speed segment on a 224-bit bus and 0.5 GB in a low speed segment on a 32-bit bus.[223]
On July 27, 2016, Nvidia agreed to a preliminary settlement of the U.S. class action lawsuit,[221] offering a $30 refund on GTX 970 purchases. The agreed upon refund represents the portion of the cost of the storage and performance capabilities the consumers assumed they were obtaining when they purchased the card.[224]
The Nvidia GeForce Partner Program was amarketing program designed to provide partnering companies with benefits such as public relations support,video game bundling, and marketing development funds.[225] The program proved to be controversial, with complaints about it possibly being ananti-competitive practice.[226]
First announced in a blog post on March 1, 2018,[227] it was canceled on May 4, 2018.[228]
On December 10, 2020, Nvidia toldYouTube tech reviewer Steven Walton of Hardware Unboxed that it would no longer supply him with GeForce Founders Edition graphics card review units.[229][230] In a Twitter message, Hardware Unboxed said, "Nvidia have officially decided to ban us from receiving GeForce Founders Edition GPU review samples. Their reasoning is that we are focusing on rasterization instead of ray tracing. They have said they will revisit this 'should your editorial direction change.'"[231]
In emails that were disclosed by Walton from Nvidia Senior PR Manager Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia had said:
...your GPU reviews and recommendations have continued to focus singularly on rasterization performance, and you have largely discounted all of the other technologies we offer gamers. It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do.[232]
TechSpot, partner site of Hardware Unboxed, said, "this and other related incidents raise serious questions around journalistic independence and what they are expecting of reviewers when they are sent products for an unbiased opinion."[232]
A number of technology reviewers came out strongly against Nvidia's move.[233][234]Linus Sebastian, ofLinus Tech Tips, titled the episode of his weekly WAN Show, "NVIDIA might ACTUALLY be EVIL..."[235] and was highly critical of the company's move to dictate specific outcomes of technology reviews.[236] The review site Gamers Nexus said it was, "Nvidia's latest decision to shoot both its feet: They've now made it so that any reviewers covering RT will become subject to scrutiny from untrusting viewers who will suspect subversion by the company. Shortsighted self-own from NVIDIA."[237]
Two days later, Nvidia reversed their stance.[238][239] Hardware Unboxed sent out a Twitter message, "I just received an email from Nvidia apologizing for the previous email & they've now walked everything back."[240][233] On December 14, Hardware Unboxed released a video explaining the controversy from their viewpoint.[241] Via Twitter, they also shared a second apology sent by Nvidia's Del Rizzo that said "to withhold samples because I didn't agree with your commentary is simply inexcusable and crossed the line."[242][243]
In 2018, Nvidia's chips became popular forcryptomining, the process of obtaining crypto rewards in exchange for verifying transactions on distributed ledgers, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said. However, the company failed to disclose that it was a "significant element" of its revenue growth from sales of chips designed for gaming, the SEC further added in a statement and charging order. Those omissions misled investors and analysts who were interested in understanding the impact of cryptomining on Nvidia's business, the SEC emphasized. Nvidia, which did not admit or deny the findings, has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle civil charges, according to a statement made by the SEC in May 2022.[244]
On September 26, 2023, Nvidia's French offices were searched by the French Competition Authority. The raid, authorized by a judge, was part of an investigation into suspected anti-competitive practices in the graphics card sector. Nvidia has not publicly commented on the incident.[245]
^Officially written asNVIDIA and stylized in its logo asnVIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized asnVIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to early-mid 2000s.[3] The unofficial capitalizationnVidia may be found within enthusiast communities and publications.[4]
^abKim, Tae (2024).The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 38.ISBN978-1324086710.
^abKim, Tae (2024).The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 39.ISBN978-1324086710.
^abcKim, Tae (2024).The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 41.ISBN978-1324086710.
^Williams, Elisa (April 15, 2002)."Crying wolf".Forbes.Archived from the original on November 29, 2020. RetrievedFebruary 11, 2017.Huang, a chip designer at AMD and LSI Logic, co-founded the company in 1993 with $2 million from Sequoia Capital and others.
^abcdefKim, Tae (2024).The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 42.ISBN978-1324086710.
^abcPeddie, Jon (September 23, 2019)."Nvidia's RIVA 128".Electronic Design.Archived from the original on January 19, 2024. RetrievedDecember 5, 2023.
^Kim, Tae (2024).The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.ISBN978-1-324-08672-7.
^Deierling, Kevin (May 21, 2020)."What Is a DPU? | NVIDIA Blog".The Official NVIDIA Blog.Archived from the original on September 15, 2022. RetrievedMay 29, 2021.
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