Computing · 1999

GPU (GeForce 256)

A dedicated chip for 3D graphics, and later for everything parallel.

Nvidia's GeForce 256 moved transform and lighting onto one chip with 23 million transistors. GPUs grew into the dominant engines for scientific computing and AI.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Personal computer 1977
CMOS 1963

What it led to 4

Programmable shaders 2001
GPU-trained neural nets 2009
Frontier (exascale) 2022
Zettascale computing ~2035

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

ML hardware FLOP/s per dollar Source: Epoch AI, ML hardware (CC BY 4.0)

Training compute of notable AI models Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models (CC BY 4.0)

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data