Nvidia Quadro

Quadro is Nvidia's brand for graphics cards intended for use in workstations running professional Computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-generated imagery (CGI), Digital content creation (DCC) applications.

The GPU chips on Quadro-branded graphics cards are identical to the ones used on GeForce-branded graphics cards. The end products (i.e. the graphics card) differentiate substantially by the provided graphics device drivers and through the available professional support for the software.

Competitors include AMD's FirePro-branded and to some extent Sky-branded product series and Intel's Xeon Phi-branded products.

History

The Quadro line of GPU cards emerged in an effort at market segmentation by Nvidia. In introducing Quadro, Nvidia was able to charge a premium for essentially the same graphics hardware in professional markets, and direct resources to properly serve the needs of those markets. To differentiate their offerings, Nvidia used driver software and firmware to selectively enable features vital to segments of the workstation market; e.g., high performance anti-aliased lines and two-sided lighting were reserved for the Quadro product. In addition, improved support through a certified driver program was put in place. These features were of little value in the gaming markets that Nvidia's products already sold to, but prevented high end customers from using the less expensive products.

Nvidia

Coordinates: 37°22′14.62″N 121°57′49.46″W / 37.3707278°N 121.9637389°W / 37.3707278; -121.9637389

NVIDIA Corporation (/ɪnˈvɪdiə/ in-VID-eeə) (commonly referred to as Nvidia, stylized as NVIDIA, nVIDIA or nVidia) began as an American technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming market, as well as system on a chip units (SOCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia's primary GPU product line, labeled "GeForce", is in direct competition with Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) "Radeon" products. Nvidia expanded its presence in the gaming industry with its handheld SHIELD Portable, SHIELD Tablet, and SHIELD Android TV.

Since 2014, Nvidia has shifted to become a platform company focused on four markets - Gaming, Professional Visualization, Data Centers and Auto.

In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications. They are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. More recently, Nvidia has moved into the mobile computing market, where it produces Tegra mobile processors for smartphones and tablets, as well as vehicle navigation and entertainment systems. In addition to AMD, its competitors include Intel and Qualcomm.

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a recognizable sign, design, or expression which identifies products or services of a particular source from those of others, although trademarks used to identify services are usually called service marks. The trademark owner can be an individual, business organization, or any legal entity. A trademark may be located on a package, a label, a voucher, or on the product itself. For the sake of corporate identity, trademarks are being displayed on company buildings.

Usage

A trademark identifies the brand owner of a particular product or service. Trademarks can be licensed to others; for example, Bullyland obtained a license to produce Smurf figurines; the Lego Group purchased a license from Lucasfilm in order to be allowed to launch Lego Star Wars; TT Toys Toys is a manufacturer of licensed ride-on replica cars for children. The unauthorized usage of trademarks by producing and trading counterfeit consumer goods is known as brand piracy.

The owner of a trademark may pursue legal action against trademark infringement. Most countries require formal registration of a trademark as a precondition for pursuing this type of action. The United States, Canada and other countries also recognize common law trademark rights, which means action can be taken to protect an unregistered trademark if it is in use. Still common law trademarks offer the holder in general less legal protection than registered trademarks.

GeForce 9 series

The GeForce 9 series is the ninth generation of NVIDIA's GeForce series of graphics processing units, the first of which was released on February 21, 2008. Products are based on a slightly repolished Tesla microarchitecture, adding PCIe 2.0 support, improved color and z-compression, and built on a 65 nm process, later using 55 nm process to reduce power consumption and die size (GeForce 8 G8x GPUs only supported PCIe 1.1 and were built on 90 nm process or 80 nm process).

GeForce 9300 Series

Geforce 9100 G

Geforce 9300 GS

On May 1, 2008 the GeForce 9300 GS was officially launched.