Nvidia Corporation is an American technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, it develops graphics processing units (GPUs), systems on chips (SoCs), and application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science, high-performance computing, video games, and mobile and automotive applications. Nvidia has been described as a Big Tech company.
Originally focused on GPUs for video gaming, Nvidia broadened their use into other markets, including artificial intelligence (AI), professional visualization, and supercomputing. The company's product lines include GeForce GPUs for gaming and creative workloads, and professional GPUs for edge computing, scientific research, and industrial applications. As of the first quarter of 2025, Nvidia held a 92% share of the discrete desktop and laptop GPU market
Nvidia ended support for older generations, meaning that they will no longer receive driver updates. GPU driver updates are important because they can fix bugs, improve compatibility, and enhance performance, especially for new games.
Generation (microarchitecture) that still get support:
Blackwell
Blackwell is a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to the Hopper and Ada Lovelace microarchitectures. It was officially announced at Nvidia's GTC 2024 keynote on March 18, 2024.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace, also referred to simply as Lovelace, is a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to the Ampere architecture, officially announced on September 20, 2022.
Ampere
Ampere is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to both the Volta and Turing architectures. It was officially announced on May 14, 2020.
Turing
Turing is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia. The architecture was first introduced in August 2018 at SIGGRAPH 2018 in the workstation-oriented Quadro RTX cards, and one week later at Gamescom in consumer GeForce 20 series graphics cards.
Generation (microarchitecture) that stopped getting support:
Nvidia has ended support for these generations because they are old and not up to today's standards
Pascal
Pascal is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, as the successor to the Maxwell architecture. The architecture was first introduced in April 2016 with the release of the Tesla P100 (GP100) on April 5, 2016, and is primarily used in the GeForce 10 series.
Maxwell is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to the Kepler microarchitecture. The Maxwell architecture was introduced in later models of the GeForce 700 series and is also used in the GeForce 800M series, GeForce 900 series, and Quadro Mxxx series, as well as some Jetson products.
Kepler is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, first introduced at retail in April 2012, as the successor to the Fermi microarchitecture. Kepler was Nvidia's first microarchitecture to focus on energy efficiency.
Fermi is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, released fermi architecture to retail in April 2010, as the successor to the Tesla microarchitecture. It was the primary microarchitecture used in the GeForce 400 series and 500 series.
Tesla is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 2006, as the successor to Curie microarchitecture. As Nvidia's first microarchitecture to implement unified shaders, it was used with GeForce 8 series, GeForce 9 series, GeForce 100 series, GeForce 200 series, and GeForce 300 series of GPUs
Curie is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 2004, as the successor to the Rankine microarchitecture. It was named with reference to the Polish physicist Marie Salomea Skłodowska-Curie and used with the GeForce 6 and 7 series.
Rankine is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 2003, as the successor to the Kelvin microarchitecture. It was named with reference to Macquorn Rankine and used with the GeForce FX series.
Kelvin is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 2001, as the successor to the Celsius microarchitecture. It was named with reference to William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and used with the GeForce 3 and 4 series.
Celsius is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 1999 microarchitecture. It was named with reference to Anders Celsius and used with the GeForce 256 and GeForce 2 series.