Beyond Computing » Introduction

Introduction  

In next posts I will write about graphics cards.

Graphics card is computer component rensposible for creating image shown on monitor screen. On first text-based computers that was simple, and microprocessor could do most of work and even then there was chip that generated output signal for screen.

However, with development of graphics operating systems, amount of informations needed to process for screen increased enormaly. Increasing got to that level that it was inpractical for main processor to process. Solution was to unload mainprocessor from all screen presentation activities, by making purpuse-made, graphics card.

While requirements of multimedia and 3D graphics were growing, importance of graphics card became bigger and bigger. It reached level of high efficiant processor units, and we can reffer to it with high specialized co-processor. Today, some graphcs cards have more transistors than CPU (Central Processing Unit), and they process far more complicated operations, and acctualy presents so called computer inside computer.

At the end of last century, production of graphics card chips reached levels unbeatable by any other PC and technology area. Leading companies are ATI, nVidia, Matrox, S3, 3Dfx (after some time nVidia bought this one). Lifetime of these graphics chips should be 6 months, which is the least comparing with any other area of PC technology. One of consequences of this is survival and strengthening ony few of main manufactures of graphics cards.