WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 NVIDIA is currently worth over $1 trillion, so it might surprise you to know that their first 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:12.240 ever product was a total flop. This is the NV1, a chip released all the way back in 1995 as part of 00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:17.280 a PCI card called the Edge 3D from hardware manufacturer Diamond. As you've probably already 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:22.640 guessed, the NV1 was an early graphics processor that also included audio processing and joystick 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:27.120 support. Back in the mid 90s, it wasn't super common to have all these functions on one card, 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:32.640 but NVIDIA believed the convenience of an all-in-one solution would make the NV1 a compelling buy. 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:39.520 But perhaps what made the NV1 even more special was the early relationship between NVIDIA and Sega. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:45.040 At the time, Sega wanted to make the games on its spiffy new Saturn console available on PC, 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:50.080 and NVIDIA jumped at the chance to make that a reality. Although the NV1 didn't support common 00:00:50.080 --> 00:00:56.720 gaming APIs of the day like OpenGL and 3DFX's Glide, it did share some common elements with 00:00:56.720 --> 00:01:02.160 the graphics chip inside the Sega Saturn. Most importantly, the fact that they both rendered 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:06.720 quadrilaterals as the basic shape for primitives. But what the heck does that mean? 00:01:06.720 --> 00:01:11.520 Well, when a graphics chip draws a frame of a video game, the shapes you see are built up from 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:16.560 simple polygons in a mesh. After this mesh is built, textures, lighting, and other effects are 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:22.720 applied to create a realistic looking scene. But in most games, triangles serve as the basic 00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:27.120 polygon building blocks, not quadrilaterals. This might seem like a small distinction, 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:32.000 but it actually ended up being a huge factor in the NV1's eventual fate. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.400 Back in the mid-90s when I had frosted tips, the video game industry had not yet settled 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:41.600 on one type of polygon as a full-fledged industry norm. Quadrilaterals, or quads, 00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:46.000 were used in the Saturn and the NV1 because they had some real advantages over triangles. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:50.800 They made it a little easier to model curved surfaces since a shape with four points can 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:55.520 be expressed in three dimensions, and because developers knew that the Saturn NV1 used quads, 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:59.120 they could account for this when programming textures. More specifically, 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:03.920 they helped the Saturn avoid some of the weird texture warping issues that one of its main 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:07.520 competitors, the original PlayStation, would eventually become infamous for. 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:12.880 But even with these advantages, quads had the major downside of being more computationally 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:17.280 expensive than the simpler triangles, which always lay in one plane because of, you know, 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:21.280 the laws of mathematics. This inherent complexity also made it trickier to map 00:02:21.280 --> 00:02:25.120 typical game textures onto quads, so if developers weren't already coding their 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:29.920 games using quadrilaterals, they didn't have much incentive to do so just so the game would 00:02:29.920 --> 00:02:37.040 run on the NV1. Aside from this major architectural issue, the NV1's many things in one design 00:02:37.040 --> 00:02:42.560 wasn't exactly much of a hit. Its 2D performance, an important metric back in 1995, 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:46.560 wasn't particularly good, and the audio capabilities didn't impress either. 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:50.320 It's like one of those all-in-one printers that's painfully taught us that a multifunctional 00:02:50.320 --> 00:02:55.120 design doesn't matter much if all those functions kind of suck. Despite the NV1's struggles, 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:01.440 NVIDIA planned to release an improved version called the NV2. But by this time, the DirectX API, 00:03:01.440 --> 00:03:06.160 basically a software tool for game developers, was starting to take hold in the market. 00:03:06.160 --> 00:03:12.240 And guess what? It was based around triangles, rather than quads. I guess that's kind of a 00:03:12.880 --> 00:03:17.840 NVIDIA did eventually release DirectX drivers for the NV1, but they were slow and buggy. 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:22.640 Basically, the drivers were just a software emulation layer, since the NV1 itself had no 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:27.440 actual native hardware support for DirectX. This marked the end of any real chance for a 00:03:27.440 --> 00:03:32.800 graphics chip optimized for quads, so the NV2 was canned before it ever saw the light of day, 00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:37.360 and NVIDIA was forced to significantly change its strategy. In fact, the NV2 was pegged for 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:41.840 use in the Sega Dreamcast, which could render triangles or quads, but that didn't happen 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.960 given the NV1's failure, and the fact that Saturn didn't do so hot in the console space either, 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:51.680 partly due to the Saturn's quad-only architecture limiting the platform's appeal for third-party 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:56.720 developers. With all that, NVIDIA shifted to a triangle-based architecture for its next product, 00:03:56.720 --> 00:04:03.520 the Riva 128, which was focused squarely, or triangularily, on DirectX support. The Riva lineup 00:04:03.520 --> 00:04:08.640 was much more successful and established NVIDIA as a legit player in the PC hardware industry. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:13.040 Setting the stage for the original GeForce chips release in 1999. 00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:16.320 So thanks for watching guys, if you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:20.720 the comments section with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.