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How about the "Sony GPU" (1994) used in the PlayStation? Edit: source https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/chasing-pixels/is-it-time-to-rename-the-g
by BlackLotus89 2y ago
How about the "Sony GPU" (1994) used in the PlayStation?
Edit: source https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/chasing-pixels/is-it-time-to-rename-the-gpu https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/chasing-pixe...
- dagmx 2y agoI believe the distinction from NVIDIA was that they considered their product as the first all in one graphics unit > a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second It’s kind of arbitrary, even when you take out the processing rate. But prior to that there was still a significant amount of work expected to be done on the CPU before feeding the GPU. That said, the term GPU did definitely exist before NVIDIA, though not meaning the same thing we use it for today.
- pjmlp 2y agoTI chips for arcades are considered one of the first. "The TMS34010, developed by Texas Instruments and released in 1986, was the first programmable graphics processor integrated circuit. While specialized graphics hardware existed earlier, such as blitters, the TMS34010 chip is a microprocessor which includes graphics-oriented instructions, making it a combination of a CPU and what would later be called a GPU." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010 And they weren't alone in the history of graphics hardware.
- dagmx 2y agoYep, and I think perhaps that’s where folks are getting hung up. NVIDIA didn’t invent the GPU. They coined the modern term “graphics processing unit”. Prior to that, various hardware existed but went by other expanded names or don’t fully match NVIDIAs arbitrary definition, which is what we use today.
- rzzzt 2y agoIBM's PGA card had an additional 8088 dedicated to graphics primitives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Graphics_Controller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Graphics_Controll...
- amy-petrik-214 2y agobasically with all those bells and whistles (transform, lighting, clipping, shaders, etc, etc) the "old way" was to engineer a bit of silicon for each one of those things, custom-like. problem was how much silicon to give to teach feature, it almost has to be fine-tuned to each individual game, a problem So nvidia comes up with the idea to sort of have a pool of generic compute units, each of which can do T&L, or shading, etc. Now the problem of fine-tuning to a game is solved. but also now you have a mini compute array that can do math fast, a general-purpose unit of processing (GPU-OP), which was a nod from NVIDIA to the gaming community (OP - overpowered)
- TapamN 2y agoI think I remember seeing the term GPU used in a Byte article from the 80s? It was a while ago when I saw it (~15 years), so I can't really remember any details.
- rzzzt 2y agoThere is a SIGGRAPH Pioneers panel where participants talk about the history of the GPU (you can find the full talk on YouTube, this is a summary article): https://www.jonpeddie.com/news/gpus-how-did-we-get-here/ https://www.jonpeddie.com/news/gpus-how-did-we-get-here/ > Two years later, Nvidia introduced the GPU. He [Curtis Priem] recalls that > Dan Vivoli, Nvidia's marketing person, came up with the term GPU, for > graphics processing. "I thought that was very arrogant of him because how > dare this little company take on Intel, which had the CPU," he said.
- msla 2y agoHere's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) in Byte Magazine from February 1985. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-02/1985_02_BYTE_10-02_Computing_and_the_Sciences/page/n99/mode/1up?q=GPU https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-02/1985_02_BY...
- TapamN 2y agoThat seems to be what I remembered. I did try a few searches; But I didn't find it in the first few results of "byte magazine gpu" on Google, and my search on IA wasn't completing. I didn't feel like spending more time than that...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 2y agoIt’s always BYTE magazine. I think “backslash” is also on them.
- rzzzt 2y agoThe article said it resolved to "Geometry Processing Unit" at that time.
- BlackLotus89 2y agoAnd RAID once stood for array of inexpensive discs and is now independent discs. But you are right different meaning. Found these here https://books.google.de/books?id=Jzo-qeUtauoC&pg=PT7&dq=%22gpu%22+graphics+processing+unit&hl=de https://books.google.de/books?id=Jzo-qeUtauoC&pg=PT7&dq=%22g... Computerworld magazine 1976 VGI called a graphics processing unit (GPU) > 3400 is a direct-writing system capable of displaying 3-D graphics and alphanumerics with speeds up to 20.000.... It's not what I would call a GPU, but I think it's hard to draw lines when it comes to naming things and defining things. If anyone else wants to try to find the real GPU https://www.google.com/search?q=%22gpu%22+graphics+processing+unit&sca_upv=1&sca_upv=1&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1900%2Ccd_max%3A1999&tbm=bks https://www.google.com/search?q=%22gpu%22+graphics+processin...
- rzzzt 2y agoI misunderstood that bit from the Jon Peddie article, the PS1's GPU was indeed a Graphics Processing Unit. Found this hardware overview in one of the Wikipedia sources to confirm: https://archive.org/details/nextgen-issue-006/page/n54/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/nextgen-issue-006/page/n54/mode/...