[7] Nvidia's professional line of GPUs are used for edge-to-cloud computing and in supercomputers and workstations for applications in fields such as architecture, engineering and construction, media and entertainment, automotive, scientific research, and manufacturing design.

[10] In addition to GPU design and outsourcing manufacturing, Nvidia provides the CUDA software platform and API that allows the creation of massively parallel programs which utilize GPUs.

[20] Nvidia's attempt to acquire Arm from SoftBank 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.

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.

[39] 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: the RIVA 128.

[39] In late 1999, Nvidia released the GeForce 256 (NV10), its first product expressly marketed as a GPU, which was most notable for introducing onboard transformation 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-picture alpha blending.

In December 2000, Nvidia reached an agreement to acquire the intellectual assets of its one-time rival 3dfx, a pioneer in consumer 3D graphics technology leading the field from the mid-1990s until 2000.

[56][57] 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.

In September 2008, Nvidia became the subject of a class action lawsuit over the defects, claiming that the faulty GPUs had been incorporated into certain laptop models manufactured by Apple Inc., Dell, and HP.

The architecture also supports a new hardware feature known as simultaneous multi-projection (SMP), which is designed to improve the quality of multi-monitor and virtual reality rendering.

[91] On March 11, 2019, Nvidia announced a deal to buy Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion[92] to substantially expand its footprint in the high-performance computing market.

The whole game is, in Nvidia's words, "refit" with path tracing, which dramatically affects the way light, reflections, and shadows work inside the engine.

[106][107] 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.

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'".

Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation said that month that during a dinner with Huang at Nobu in Palo Alto, he and Elon Musk of Tesla, Inc. and xAI "were begging" for H100s, "I guess is the best way to describe it.

[124] In October 2023, it was reported that Nvidia had quietly begun designing ARM-based central processing units (CPUs) for Microsoft's Windows operating system with a target to start selling them in 2025.

[125] In January 2024, Forbes reported that Nvidia has increased its lobbying presence in Washington, D.C. as American lawmakers consider proposals to regulate artificial intelligence.

[126] 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 on eBay, individual H100s cost over $40,000.

[127] Tech giants were purchasing tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs for their data centers to run generative artificial intelligence projects; simple arithmetic implied that they were committing to billions of dollars in capital expenditures.

[131] In June 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department (DOJ) began antitrust investigations into Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI, focusing on their influence in the AI industry.

[133][134] 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.

[174] 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.

[179][180][181] 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.

[189] Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 to OpenAI 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.

In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications.

[224][225] In a Twitter message, Hardware Unboxed said, "Nvidia have officially decided to ban us from receiving GeForce Founders Edition GPU review samples.

[227]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.

[236] 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.

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.