Before we take a detailed look at NVIDIA's GeForce3, I would like to cover some of the highlights of our meeting with NVIDIA, which took place on February 16, 2001. A word of thanks goes out to Marisa Hernandez, Angela Faucett, and Diane Vanasse for organizing this event. The accommodations were excellent and the meetings were informative, but I sensed a feeling of urgency at NVIDIA that day as preparations were being made for the debut of the GeForce3.
NVIDIA Corporate Headquarters
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, I traveled over 5,000 miles in three days to attend the affiliate event at NVIDIA. My work was cut out as I wanted to make sure that nV News had a preview at the time of the GeForce3 announcement and only had 9 days left. With the help of my partner Brian Gray we were able to pull it off.
Our first presentation was a corporate overview of NVIDIA given by Michael Hara who is the Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Dan Vivoli who is the Senior Vice President of Marketing was present as well.
Mr. Hara stressed that future growth for NVIDIA is important as they continue to penetrate new markets. We've already seen this take place during the latter part of 2000 with the announcement of the GeForce2 MX for the Apple Macintosh and more recently the GeForce2 Go for the mobile PC. With an estimated eight billion dollars in revenue up for grabs in the graphics chipset market, NVIDIA still has plenty of opportunity to grow.
NVIDIA Estimated Market Share - 2000
| Target Market |
Millions of Units |
Market Share |
| Desktop |
133 |
21% |
| Workstation |
2 |
30% |
| Mobile |
31 |
0% |
| Apple |
6 |
0% |
| Consoles |
22 |
0% |
As NVIDIA ramps up production on products based on the GeForce2 architecture, the GeForce2 Go for the mobile PC market represents the largest opportunity for growth. The GeForce2 Go has the potential to reach upwards of 30 million units while the Apple and Workstation markets are expected to reach 6 and 2 million units respectively.
Just how many new markets will be available to NVIDIA? That's a good question, but with the acquisition of former competitor 3dfx, NVIDIA has brought over 160 new employees on board. With the number of top quality engineers NVIDIA now has, be on the lookout for some exciting products in the future. NVIDIA may soon end up redefining the entire value PC market.
With the recent announcement by NVIDIA that two of their key components of the Xbox are in fabrication, the rollout of the Microsoft console game system is on schedule to debut in the forth quarter of 2001. The Xbox may be a key source of revenue for NVIDIA in 2002 especially if it can penetrate the Far Eastern market where consumers have strong brand loyalty to products from Nintendo, Sega, and Sony.
Michael Hara - VP Investor Relations and Communications
Here is a listing of NVIDIA's goals for their 2002 fiscal year:
- #1 technology and market leader of GPUs
- Develop "top-to-bottom" offering in each market they serve
- Build a dominant position in mobile
- Deliver Xbox for Christmas 2001 launch
- Leverage Xbox architecture into a winning "integrated" core logic roadmap - redefine value PC market
In other words, take no prisoners and dominate the markets you enter.
As expected, the majority of the presentation was on the GeForce3. Following an overview of NVIDIA's next generation graphics processing unit, we were treated with a host of fantastic looking technical demos by Mark Daly. Mark also offered a few previews of games currently under development that will expose features of the GeForce3.
NVIDIA Awards Showcase
I also spoke at length with Brian Harvey who is a Developer Relations Account Manager. Brian works with both large and small game developers and hinted at upcoming titles, and a major update to an existing title, that will incorporate features of the GeForce3.
Wrapping up the day's events included demonstrations from Sanford Russell on enhanced design tools for game artists and a session on benchmarking the GeForce3 by Mark Daly. Both of these topics will be elaborated on later in the preview.
Next Page: Preview Introduction
