On October 11, 1999, Nvidia released its GeForce 256, the first product the company marketed as a GPU. Whether it truly earned that label is debatable. 3dfx fans argue that 3dfx made GPUs earlier, and the GeForce was not clearly more of a GPU than the TNT2. Its transform and lighting engine offloaded work from the CPU, a concept that already existed. Commodore did it with the Amiga in 1985, and 3dfx was doing it on PCs by 1996.
The GeForce 256 was not an immediate game changer. It was a real boon for systems with low-end CPUs like 300 MHz Celerons, but faster processors could handle transform and lighting in software faster than the GeForce 256 could in hardware. Still, the idea of offloading these tasks from the CPU proved sound. Nvidia also stayed ahead of Intel by releasing follow-up graphics cards more often, and its later GeForce GPUs performed well.
Nvidia's early history was rocky. Three years after its 1993 founding, it partnered with Sega on video hardware for the Dreamcast console in 1996. Nvidia's chip could not meet Sega's demands, and the company ran out of money. Sega bailed it out with a $5 million investment, and Sega later made a $10 million profit, so the deal worked out well for Sega. That funding helped Nvidia launch the Riva 128, which sold more than a million units, and then the successful TNT2 and GeForce 256.
Nvidia later purchased most of 3dfx's intellectual property on December 15, 2000. 3dfx wound down operations and went bankrupt on October 15, 2002. Today, Nvidia is one of the most successful companies in the world.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing