I'm not really convinced that the story of Nvidia's origin does have the profound meaning the author seems to think it does.
> the Nvidia GPUs [...] were originally inspired by [...] the needs of computer graphics artists in the gaming industry.
I think this passage demonstrates a misread of the quoted section[1] from the interview with Huang. The RIVA 128 was a 3D accelerator / video card for gamers, not game artists. Further, it was pretty clear by 1997 that 3D graphics for games was not a fad nor by that time was it a radical new approach -- Nvidia successfully entered an established market.
[1] Huang liked video games and thought that there was a market for better graphics chips. Instead of drawing pixels by hand, artists were starting to assemble three-dimensional polygons out of shapes known as “primitives,” saving time and effort but requiring new chips.
> the Nvidia GPUs [...] were originally inspired by [...] the needs of computer graphics artists in the gaming industry.
I think this passage demonstrates a misread of the quoted section[1] from the interview with Huang. The RIVA 128 was a 3D accelerator / video card for gamers, not game artists. Further, it was pretty clear by 1997 that 3D graphics for games was not a fad nor by that time was it a radical new approach -- Nvidia successfully entered an established market.
[1] Huang liked video games and thought that there was a market for better graphics chips. Instead of drawing pixels by hand, artists were starting to assemble three-dimensional polygons out of shapes known as “primitives,” saving time and effort but requiring new chips.