Background

• The origin of the GPU can be traced to the 1980s. Then, companies such as Intel Corp., Commodore Business Machines (CBM) and International Business Machines (IBM) devised cards that draw the lines of a computer display. However, the real breakthrough came on Aug. 31, 1999, when GPU manufacturer Nvidia released the GeForce 256, which represented a huge evolution in 3-D rendering and gaming performance. It marked the introduction of the GPU, in the modern sense of the word, to the personal computer industry.
  
  

Types

• Two major types of GPUs used in the PC market: integrated or shared graphics cards and dedicated or discrete graphics cards. Integrated GPUs are so named because they use a portion of the PC's system memory -- or RAM -- for their tasks, and they are integrated into the computer's motherboard. Dedicated GPUs, by contrast, have their own memory -- or RAM "dedicated" to them -- so they do not need to share memory with the computer. Also, they are usually attached to the PC via one of the motherboard's expansion ports, which, at the time of publication, is the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, or PCI-E, interface. Built for more intense computing tasks such as PC gaming, dedicated cards are more powerful than integrated ones.
  
  

Applications

• Due to its origins, the GPU is most commonly associated with PCs; GPUs are designed to be in charge of computers' video and graphics capabilities. GPUs have several other applications, however. A graphics card can be found in any electronic device with some sort of a screen. This includes video game consoles, portable media players, mobile phones and specialized and high-performance computer systems such as embedded systems and workstations.
  
  

Main Manufacturers

• Nvidia is a leading GPU manufacturer and supplier worldwide. GeForce, which traces its origin to the aforementioned GeForce 256 card, remains the company's flagship GPU brand. Semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) directly competes with the GeForce line with its AMD Radeon series of graphics products. Also worthy of mention in the graphics arena is Intel, notable for its motherboard-integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator series and the Intel HD Graphics chipset built into the company's consumer-oriented Core i5 and i7 CPUs.