NVIDIA Celebrates 25th Anniversary of GeForce 256

Today, October 11, 2024, marks 25 years since the release of the world's first video card with a GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 256. In 1999, this event became a revolution in the world of computer games, although it did not receive much attention from the general public. However, it was this NVIDIA product that became the foundation for the development of both gaming technologies and modern AI solutions.

With the introduction of features like hardware transformation and lighting (T&L), the GeForce 256 freed up CPUs, allowing gamers and developers to use more polygons and create more detailed virtual worlds. In games like Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, the GeForce 256 literally ushered in a new era of graphics, delivering performance levels that were previously thought to be unachievable.

Over time, NVIDIA's graphics card performance has not only improved visual effects and textures, but also given impetus to new directions in computing. It was precisely because of their parallel processing capabilities that GPUs attracted the attention of AI researchers. As early as the early 2010s, NVIDIA was used in scientific projects related to deep learning, including the famous success of the AlexNet neural network in the ImageNet competition.