From Startup Gamble to Graphics Giant
More than thirty years ago, Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem started a tiny company with a huge goal. They wanted to create a new kind of computer that could solve problems normal computers could not handle. That company was Nvidia.
Back in 1993 this sounded exciting but there was a major problem. Every real world application that existed at the time already ran fine on traditional computers. If normal systems could not handle a task it usually did not exist as a product. Nvidia had a mission but no obvious use case.
In a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast Jensen Huang looked back at this period and how close Nvidia came to failing before it ever became a gaming powerhouse or an AI leader. The story is deeply tied to video games, early 3D graphics, and one risky bet that changed PC hardware forever.
The Sega Bet and the NV1 Misstep
Nvidia eventually found its first real opportunity in 3D graphics. At the time Sega was pushing cutting edge arcade visuals with games like Virtua Fighter. Jensen and his team demonstrated their early graphics tech called NV1 to Sega and managed to spark serious interest.
Sega agreed to work with Nvidia on its next console and this partnership practically saved the young company. Jensen even told Sega’s CEO that the five million dollar investment would probably be lost but without it Nvidia had no chance to survive. Sega took the risk mostly because it believed in Jensen himself.
The NV1 became Nvidia’s first 3D acceleration chip. It was sold on graphics cards like the Diamond Edge 3D and represented a very different design compared to what we use today. Nvidia tried curved surfaces and forward texture mapping while most of the industry went with flat triangles and traditional z buffering.
In hindsight all three of Nvidia’s big technical bets for NV1 were wrong. The architecture was clever but out of step with where the wider graphics ecosystem was heading. Competing approaches with triangles and z buffers won and became the standard used in modern GPUs.
Things got worse when Sega decided not to use Nvidia’s follow up chip, the NV2, in its Dreamcast console. Instead Sega went with UK based VideoLogic using the PowerVR graphics architecture. Losing the console design win meant Nvidia was suddenly in serious trouble again, with expensive R&D behind it and no big customer ahead.
However Nvidia had negotiated one important contract clause. If it could deliver a working NV2 prototype on a motherboard about the size of the Sega Genesis board, Sega would owe it a one million dollar payout even if the chip never shipped in a console.
After roughly a year of intense work Nvidia hit that milestone. Sega walked away from NV2 for its Dreamcast but still had to pay the one million dollars. Combined with a painful round of staff cuts that cash became a vital lifeline and gave Nvidia just enough runway to try one more time.
Riva 128 and Betting Everything on PC Gamers
That one more attempt was the NV3 better known as the Riva 128. This time Nvidia aligned its design with industry standards. The Riva 128 focused on fast triangle based rendering and conventional z buffering. It was a true PC graphics accelerator at the right moment, as Windows gaming and 3D APIs were starting to take off.
Early drivers were not perfect but that was common for the late 1990s. What mattered was that the chip was quick, capable, and appealing to game developers and gamers. Riva 128 sold well enough to secure Nvidia’s future and pave the way for later hits like the Riva TNT and GeForce series.
On the podcast Huang summed up this period by saying that Nvidia bet the farm on video games. Instead of chasing every possible use case the company narrowed its focus to one very specific problem: deliver the best possible graphics performance for gamers. That focus let Nvidia ignore other distractions and pour resources into gaming hardware.
The result speaks for itself. Today Nvidia controls the vast majority of the discrete GPU market and its GeForce brand defines high end PC gaming performance. Modern cards push huge frame rates at high resolutions drive advanced ray tracing effects and power competitive esports titles as well as cinematic single player games.
Ironically the same GPU architecture that was supercharged for games is now the backbone of the AI revolution. The CUDA ecosystem and massive parallel processing power originally built to accelerate graphics and compute workloads for enthusiasts have turned Nvidia into a central player in data centers and machine learning.
Huang and Rogan joked about how odd it is that advanced artificial intelligence might effectively be born from the desire to make video games look better. Yet that is exactly what happened. The relentless push for more immersive visuals smoother gameplay and higher resolutions pushed GPU design forward until it was powerful enough to tackle problems far beyond gaming.
From Rage and Voodoo to GeForce and Beyond
For older PC gamers this story is a nostalgic trip back to the late 1990s. Many remember installing early 3D accelerators like the ATI Rage Pro the original Riva TNT or the legendary 3dfx Voodoo cards and seeing games transformed overnight. Nvidia’s Riva 128 era was part of that wave and it laid the foundation for every GeForce generation that followed.
Today when you slot an RTX card into your rig and fire up the latest AAA game it is worth remembering how close that ecosystem came to never existing. A risky console deal a nearly failed architecture a lifesaving contract clause and a final focused bet on gamers all had to line up.
Nvidia’s journey shows how deeply PC gaming and GPU history are connected. The chase for better frame rates and graphics did not just give us prettier games. It helped create the hardware that now powers AI research cloud gaming and an entire universe of performance hungry technology.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/during-nvidias-formative-years-its-ceo-reckons-it-had-a-mission-statement-for-a-company-that-has-no-chance-of-success-but-it-was-fine-because-segas-ceo-thought-jensen-was-a-young-man-he-liked/
