Graphics Processing Unit

A graphics processing unit, or GPU, is a specialized electronic circuit built to accelerate digital image processing and computer graphics, found as a component on a discrete graphics card or embedded on motherboards, phones, personal computers, workstations and game consoles, and increasingly used for artificial intelligence processing because the same linear-algebra acceleration serves both tasks. Evans and Sutherland introduced the Line Drawing System-1 in 1969, the first all-digital system able to perform matrix multiplication, and the company's joint effort with the University of Utah produced the first MOSFET video framebuffer capable of color and smooth shading in 1975. Jim Clark and Marc Hannah at Stanford University designed the Geometry Engine in 1981, a VLSI vector-processor chip that proved decisive for later graphics hardware, and the modern GPU emerged during the 1990s as chips gained the ability to draw lines and text and, later, full 3D graphics without help from the computer's main processor.