1. Sega knew earlier that triangle architecture made more sense, but NVIDIA did not comply. Sega had already distanced itself from NVIDIA but could not kill the deal.
2. NV2 never worked. NVIDIA also realised it was going the wrong path. It came back to Sega and decided to kill the deal mutually.
3. Jensen picked a better leader, David Kirk, and focused on NV3, also known as RIVA128.
I still remember reading the early reviews on Riva TNT and getting all giddy about it. “Finally a real competitor to 3D Voodoo FX cards (3Dfx)”, I thought. Good times.
In case you’re like me and balked at the “first GPU” claim, they mean first design that integrated hardware T&L, clipping, and rendering on a single chip, a definition conveniently made by nVidia themselves.
Wow what a great bit of history in gaming and computing. I wonder if Jensen Huang has thought about paying back Irimajiri-san now that Nvidia is a giant. It would also be fun to see Nvidia revive Sega to greatness.
Rather when Sega struggled in the early 2000s and left the console hardware business, Jensen had a good laugh about them and bought himself a new leather jacket or something.
1. Sega knew earlier that triangle architecture made more sense, but NVIDIA did not comply. Sega had already distanced itself from NVIDIA but could not kill the deal.
2. NV2 never worked. NVIDIA also realised it was going the wrong path. It came back to Sega and decided to kill the deal mutually.
3. Jensen picked a better leader, David Kirk, and focused on NV3, also known as RIVA128.