GeForce 6600GT GPU

A Graphics Processing Unit or GPU (also occasionally called Visual Processing Unit or VPU) is the microprocessor of a graphics card (or graphics accelerator) for a personal computer or game console. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating and displaying computer graphics, and their highly-parallel structure makes them more effective than typical CPUs for a range of complex algorithms. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (978x938, 253 KB) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (978x938, 253 KB) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... The GeForce 6 Series (codenamed NV40) is NVIDIAs sixth generation of graphics processors. ... Microprocessors, including an Intel 80486DX2 and an Intel 80386 A microprocessor (abbreviated as µP or uP) is an electronic computer central processing unit (CPU) made from miniaturized transistors and other circuit elements on a single semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) (aka microchip or just chip). ... Modern graphics cards are extremely complex and power-hungry, as seen with this GeForce 4 4200-based graphics card that has its own cooling fan. ... The Nintendo GameCube is an example of a popular video game console. ... Computer graphics (CG) is the field of visual computing, where one utilizes computers both to generate visual images synthetically and to integrate or alter visual and spatial information sampled from the real world. ... This CPU uses numerous pins to connect to the motherboard. ...

A GPU implements a number of graphics primitive operations in a way that makes running them much faster than drawing directly to the screen with the host CPU. The most common operations for early 2D computer graphics include the BitBLT operation, usually in special hardware called a "blitter", and operations for drawing rectangles, triangles, circles and arcs. Modern GPUs also have support for 3D computer graphics, and typically include digital video-related functions as well. The word primitive can refer to: primitive art and Primitivism (art) primitive (biology) primitive (computer science) primitive (linguistics) primitive (mathematics) primitive (ontology) Primitive (song) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... 2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models (such as 2D geometric models, text, and digital images) and by techniques specific to them. ... Bit blit (bitblt, blitting etc. ... A Blitter is a chip that specialises in bitmap data-transfer using bit blit methods. ... In geometry, a rectangle is a defined as a quadrilateral polygon in which all four angles are right angles. ... A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a two-dimensional figure with three vertices and three sides which are straight line segments. ... In Euclidean geometry, a circle is the set of all points in a plane at a fixed distance, called the radius, from a fixed point, called the centre. ... ARC may be: ARC (former name of Hanson Quarry Products Europe) Action Régionaliste Corse Adaptive Replacement Cache Advance Reader Copy Advanced RISC Computing Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists Affinity, Reality and Communication, the Scientology concept of understanding; see ARC (Scientology) Aging Research Centre Agricultural Research Council AIDS-related complex... The rewrite of this article is being devised at Talk:3D computer graphics/Temp. ... Digital video is a type of video recording system that works by using a digital, rather than analog, representation of the video signal. ...

History

Modern GPUs are descended from the monolithic graphics chips of the late 1970s and 1980s. These chips had limited BitBLT support in the form of sprites, if they had BitBLT support at all, and usually had no shape-drawing support. Some GPUs could run several operations in a display list, and could use DMA to reduce the load on the host processor; an early example of the was the ANTIC co-processor used in the Atari 800 and Atari 5200. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, high-speed, general purpose microprocessors were popular for implementing high-end GPUs; several (very expensive) graphics boards for PCs and workstations used digital signal processor chips (like TI's TMS340 series) to implement fast drawing functions, and many laser printers shipped with a PostScript raster image processor (a special case of a GPU) running on a RISC CPU like the AMD 29000. Early graphics chips were simple video adapters for generating text and computer graphics on a video computer display found in early computers and graphics cards. ... This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ... Display list - a group of GL (graphics language, e. ... Direct memory access (DMA) allows certain hardware subsystems within a computer to access system memory for reading and/or writing independently of the CPU. Many hardware systems use DMA including disk drive controllers, graphics cards, network cards, and sound cards. ... ANTIC (Alpha-Numeric Television Interface Circuit) was an early video system chip used in the Atari 8-bit family of microcomputers as well as some of Ataris video game consoles of the 1980s. ... Atari built a series of 8-bit home computers based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, starting in 1979. ... Atari 5200 System The Atari 5200 was a video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari. ... A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time. ... Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), better known in the electronics industry as TI, is a company based in Dallas, Texas, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. ... A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that produces high quality printing, and is able to produce both text and graphics. ... PostScript (PS) is a page description language used primarily in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. ... A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a bitmap. ... Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC), is a microprocessor CPU design philosophy that favors a smaller and simpler set of instructions that all take about the same amount of time to execute. ... The AMD 29000, often simply 29k, was a popular family of RISC-based 32-bit microprocessors and microcontrollers from Advanced Micro Devices. ...

As chip process technology improved, it eventually became possible to move drawing support and BitBLT onto the same board (and, eventually, into the same chip) as a regular frame buffer controller such as VGA; these cut-down "2D accelerators" weren't as flexible as microprocessor-based GPUs, but were much easier to make and sell. The Amiga was the first mass-market computer to include a blitter in its video hardware, and IBM's 8514 graphics system was one of the first PC video cards to implement 2D primitives in hardware. The framebuffer is a part of RAM in a computer allocated to hold the graphics information for one frame or picture. ... Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a computer display standard first marketed in 1987 by IBM. VGA belongs to a family of earlier IBM video standards and largely remains backward compatible with them. ... In computing, Amiga is a range of home/personal computers primarily using the Motorola 68000 processor family, whose development started in 1982, initially as a game machine. ... The 8514 is an IBM graphics computer display standard supporting a display resolution of 1024×768 pixels with 256 colours at 43. ...

By the early 1990s, the rise of Microsoft Windows sparked a surge of interest in high-speed, high-resolution 2D bitmap graphics (which had been the domain of Unix workstations and the Apple Macintosh before then.) For the PC market, the dominance of Windows meant PC graphics vendors could now focus development effort on a single programming interface, GDI. // Microsoft Windows is a range of operating environments for personal computers and servers. ... The box for Mac OS X v10. ... GDI is short for Graphics Device Interface or Graphical Device Interface, and is one of the three core components or subsystems of Microsoft Windows. ...

In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the first single-chip 2D accelerator, the S3 86C911 (which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an indication of the speed increase it promised). The 86C911 spawned a host of imitators; by 1995, every major PC graphics chip maker had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. By this time, fixed-function Windows accelerators had surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in terms of Windows performance, and coprocessors faded away from the PC market. S3 Graphics, Ltd are a computer hardware company specialising in the field of graphics. ... A 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS The Porsche 911 is a famous and distinctive sportscar made by Porsche AG of Stuttgart, Germany. ...

With the advent of the DirectX version 8 API and similar functionality in OpenGL, GPUs added programmable shading to their capabilities. Each pixel could now be processed by a short program that could including additional image textures as inputs, and each geometry vertex could likewise be processed by a short program before it as projected onto the screen. By 2003, with the introduction of the NVIDIA GeForce FX (a.k.a. NV30), pixel and vertex shaders could implement looping, lengthy floating point math, and in general were quickly becoming as flexible as a CPU for image-array-style operations. The current official DirectX logo. ... OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics (and 2D computer graphics as well). ... Shade is the blocking of sunlight (in particular direct sunshine) by any object, and also the shadow created by that object. ... NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles (Xbox). ... The GeForce FX (codenamed NV30) is a graphics card in the GeForce line, from the manufacturer NVIDIA. The fastest model (GeForce FX 5950 Ultra) appears comparable to competitor ATI Technologiess Radeon 9800 XT. It features DDR, DDR-II or GDDR-3 memory, a 130 nanometer fabrication process, and a...

Today parallel GPUs have begun making computational inroads against the CPU, and a subfield of research, dubbed GPGPU for General Purpose Computing on GPU has found its way into fields as diverse as oil exploration, scientific image processing, and even stock options pricing determination. General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units (also referred to as GPGP and to a lesser extent GP^2) is a recent trend in computer science that uses the graphics processing unit to perform the computations rather than the CPU. Game programmers have had the need to make more realistic... Oil Exploration is the search by petroleum geologists for hydrocarbon deposits beneath the Earths surface. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... A stock option is a specific type of option with a stock as the underlying instrument (the security that the value of the option is based on). ...

Current GPU capabilities

Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They began by accelerating the memory intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, and later added units to accelerate geometry calculations such as mapping vertex into different coordinate systems. Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color formats. Because most of these computations involve matrix and vector operations, engineers and scientists have increasingly studied using GPUs for non-graphical calculations. The rewrite of this article is being devised at Talk:3D computer graphics/Temp. ... Spherical texture mapping Texture mapping is a method of adding realism to a computer-generated graphic. ... Rendering has several different usages: Rendering (computer graphics) is the process of producing the pixels of an image from a higher-level description of its components. ... Geometry (from the Greek words Ge = earth and metro = measure) is the branch of mathematics first introduced by Theaetetus dealing with spatial relationships. ... In geometry, a vertex (Latin: whirl, whirlpool; plural vertices) is a corner of a polygon (where two sides meet) or of a polyhedron (where three or more faces and an equal number of edges meet). ... See Cartesian coordinate system or Coordinates (elementary mathematics) for a more elementary introduction to this topic. ... This CPU uses numerous pins to connect to the motherboard. ... In information theory, oversampling is the process of sampling a signal with a sampling frequency higher than the nyquist frequency. ... In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points from a discrete set of known data points. ... In statistics, signal processing, and related disciplines, aliasing is an effect that causes different continuous signals to become indistinguishable (or aliases of one another) when sampled. ... Color is an important part of the visual arts. ... For the square matrix section, see square matrix. ... Vector calculus is a field of mathematics concerned with multivariate real analysis of vectors in 2 or more dimensions. ...

Although modern PC GPUs feature progammability in the form of 3D-shaders, this should not be confused with general software progammability. Instead, these units operate as SIMD or sometimes MIMD parallel processors. For rectangular arrays of colored pixels, this is an optimal design, and many algorithms -- but not all -- can be adapted to use a GPU for extremely high throughput. In computing, SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) is a set of operations for efficiently handling large quantities of data in parallel, as in a vector processor or array processor. ... Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD) is a type of parallel computing architecture where many functional units perform different operations on different data. ...

In addition to the 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and frame buffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). In addition, most GPUs made since 1995 support the YUV color space and hardware overlays (important for digital video playback), and many GPUs made since 2000 support MPEG primitives like motion compensation and iDCT. 1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Example of U-V color plane, Y value = 0. ... A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components (e. ... In telephony, especially in North America, an overlay plan is the practice of introducing a new area code by applying it onto a geographic area that is already occupied by one or more existing area codes, resulting in two (or more) area codes serving the same area. ... Digital video is a type of video recording system that works by using a digital, rather than analog, representation of the video signal. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. ... Motion compensation is a way of describing the difference between consecutive frames in terms of the where each section of the former frame has moved to. ... iDCT is an acronym for inverse Discrete Cosine Transform, a transformation step commonly used in software that works with different multimedia formats such as MP3, Vorbis, MPEG or JPEG. One-dimensional iDCT can be thought of as moving a digitized signal from the frequency domain into the time domain, but...

The typical modern stand-alone GPU sits on a separate graphics card from the motherboard, connected to the CPU and main RAM through the AGP or PCI Express bus. It has access to RAM on the card which is usually faster but lower-capacity than the main RAM. On the other hand, many motherboards have a GPU integrated into the Northbridge that uses the main memory as a frame buffer. This will usually be a cheaper solution than an independent GPU but will have dramatically lower performance. Integrated motherboards may or may not have a slot for a stand-alone graphics card. Modern graphics cards are extremely complex and power-hungry, as seen with this GeForce 4 4200-based graphics card that has its own cooling fan. ... ASRock main board - KT400A chipset A motherboard, also known as main board, logic board or system board, and sometimes abbreviated as mobo, is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a computer. ... This CPU uses numerous pins to connect to the motherboard. ... Look up RAM and random access memory in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Different types of RAM. From top to bottom: DIP, SIPP, SIMM 30 pin, SIMM 72 pin, DIMM, DDR DIMM Random access memory (sometimes random-access memory), commonly known by its acronym RAM, is a type of computer storage... The Accelerated Graphics Port (also called Advanced Graphics Port) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a single device (generally a graphics card) to a computers motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. ... PCI Express (formerly known as 3GIO for 3rd Generation I/O, not to be mistaken with PCI-X) is an implementation of the PCI computer bus that uses existing PCI programming concepts and communications standards, but bases it on a much faster serial communications system. ... The northbridge is traditionally one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a PC motherboard, the other being the Southbridge. ...

GPU manufacturers

• NVIDIA Corporation
• ATI Technologies
• 3Dlabs
• Matrox
• XGI Technology Inc.
• Intel
• 3dfx (now part of NVIDIA)

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles (Xbox). ... ATI Technologies Inc. ... 3Dlabs is a graphics card vendor that develops high-end graphics chip technology and markets its Wildcat computer graphics solutions to design professionals in the CAD and content creation industries. ... Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd is a Canadian company based in Dorval, Quebec, which produces video card components and equipment for personal computers. ... XGI Technology Inc. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) (founded 1968) is a U.S.-based multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... 3dfx Interactive was a company which specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics cards and graphics processing units. ... NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles (Xbox). ...

See also

• Computer graphics
• Computer hardware
• Game console
• GPGPU