To the best of my recollection, the GeForce 256 was the first one that was marketed as a “GPU” and began to popularize that term in the industry.
Specifically because it did transformation and lighting calcs in (non-programmable until GeForce 3) hardware, instead of in software on the main CPU.
Yes, NVIDIA made 3D accelerators before the GeForce line. I have many of them in my collection. But (IIRC) it did not market them as “GPUs”. That term wasn’t really used yet.
glimshe•7m ago
Got it. Well, to be honest the marketing distinction isn't terribly interesting. But it would still be cool to see how the early GPUs (even if not called that) evolved.
a3w•27m ago
First we had video or graphics accelerators, for video, or rendering. Then 2D/3D mentions with different performance or quality became a topic.
Then we got GPUs to say "This thing is closer to a CPU by now".
Then those were recoined into GPGPU, as in general purpose GPU, when CUDA became an important feature and again to say "This thing is closer to a CPU by now".
glimshe•33m ago
xnx•19m ago
moosedev•17m ago
Specifically because it did transformation and lighting calcs in (non-programmable until GeForce 3) hardware, instead of in software on the main CPU.
Yes, NVIDIA made 3D accelerators before the GeForce line. I have many of them in my collection. But (IIRC) it did not market them as “GPUs”. That term wasn’t really used yet.
glimshe•7m ago