Nvidia designed the CUDA platform for general-purpose GPU computing.
CUDA, short for Compute Unified Device Architecture, was introduced by Nvidia in 2006. It allows developers to use compatible graphics processing units for parallel calculations rather than limiting them to displaying graphics. This capability became important in scientific computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Nvidia’s GPUs and software ecosystem helped turn the company into one of the world’s largest businesses by market capitalization. The firm was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, and first focused on graphics hardware for personal computers and video games.
A GPU is designed to perform many calculations simultaneously, while a CPU is generally optimized for a smaller number of more sequential tasks. Nvidia’s success in accelerated computing therefore rests on both its chips and its software tools, not on graphics cards alone.