Editing GeForce 256 (section)

==Architecture==
[[File:KL NVIDIA Geforce 256.jpg|right|thumb|GeForce 256 (NV10) GPU]]
[[File:Quadro NV10GL GPU.jpg|right|thumb|Quadro (NV10GL) GPU]]
[[File:NVIDIA@220nm@Fixed-pipline@NV10@GeForce 256@T5A3202220008 S1 Taiwan A Stack-DSC04167-DSC04189 - ZS-DMap-1 (30217645675).jpg|thumb|Die shot of an NV10 GPU]]
GeForce 256 was marketed as "the world's first 'GPU', or [[Graphics Processing Unit]]", a term Nvidia defined at the time as "a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second".<ref>{{cite web |title=nVidia unveils new computer graphics accelerator |url=https://money.cnn.com/1999/08/31/technology/nvidia/ |website=[[CNNfn]] |date=August 31, 1999}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu.html |title=Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) |website=www.nvidia.com |date=December 17, 2009 |access-date=March 24, 2016}}</ref>

The "256" in its name stems from the "256-bit QuadPipe Rendering Engine", a term describing the four 64-bit pixel pipelines of the NV10 chip. In single-textured games NV10 could put out 4&nbsp;pixels per cycle, while a two-textured scenario would limit this to 2&nbsp;multitextured pixels per cycle, as the chip still had only one TMU per pipeline, just as TNT2.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=https://www.anandtech.com/show/391|title=NVIDIA GeForce 256 Part 1: To buy or not to buy|first=Anand Lal|last=Shimpi|website=www.anandtech.com}}</ref> In terms of rendering features, GeForce&nbsp;256 also added support for [[Cube mapping|cube environment mapping]]<ref name="auto"/> and [[Normal mapping|dot-product (Dot3) bump mapping]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high,294.html|title=High-Tech And Vertex Juggling – NVIDIA's New GeForce3 GPU|first=Thomas Pabst 27|last=February 2001|website=Tom's Hardware|date=February 27, 2001 }}</ref>

The integration of the transform and lighting hardware into the GPU itself set the GeForce&nbsp;256 apart from older 3D accelerators that relied on the CPU to perform these calculations (also known as software transform and lighting). This reduction of 3D graphics solution complexity brought the cost of such hardware to a new low and made it accessible to cheap consumer graphics cards instead of being limited to the previous expensive professionally oriented niche designed for [[computer-aided design]] (CAD). NV10's T&L engine also allowed Nvidia to enter the CAD market with dedicated cards for the first time, with a product called [[Nvidia Quadro|Quadro]]. The Quadro line uses the same silicon chips as the GeForce cards, but has different driver support and certifications tailored to the unique requirements of CAD applications.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nvidia.com/page/workstation.html |title=Nvidia Workstation Products |publisher=Nvidia.com |access-date=October 2, 2007}}</ref>

The chip was manufactured by [[TSMC]] using its [[250 nm process|220&nbsp;nm]] [[CMOS]] [[semiconductor device fabrication|process]].<ref name="techspot">{{cite web |last1=Singer |first1=Graham |title=History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 2 |url=https://www.techspot.com/article/653-history-of-the-gpu-part-2/ |website=TechSpot |date=April 3, 2013 |access-date=21 July 2019}}</ref> 

There was only one GeForce 256 release, as succeeding GeForce products would have varying chip speeds. However there were two memory configurations, with the SDR version released in October 1999 and the DDR version released in mid-December 1999{{snd}}each with a different type of [[SDRAM]] memory. The SDR version uses [[SDR SDRAM]] memory from [[Samsung Electronics]],<ref>{{cite web |title=NVIDIA GeForce 256 SDR |url=https://videocardz.net/nvidia-geforce-256-sdr/ |website=VideoCardz.net |access-date=10 July 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=K4S161622D Datasheet |url=http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/K/4/S/1/K4S161622D.shtml |publisher=[[Samsung Electronics]] |access-date=10 July 2019}}</ref> while the later DDR version uses [[DDR SDRAM]] memory from [[Hyundai Electronics]] (now [[SK Hynix]]).<ref>{{cite web |title=NVIDIA GeForce 256 DDR |url=https://videocardz.net/nvidia-geforce-256-ddr-64mb/ |website=VideoCardz.net |access-date=10 July 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=HY5DV651622 Datasheet |url=http://www.ic72.com/pdf_file/h/169210.pdf |publisher=[[Hynix]] |access-date=10 July 2019}}</ref>