Before we go ahead with the different computing platforms and modules on AMD/NVIDIA, let's first look into how the first GPU came into being.
Though the term GPU was first coined by NVIDIA, the IBM Professional Graphics Controller (PGA) was one of the first 2D/3D video cards that was released for the PC in 1984. It used an onboard Intel 8088 microprocessor to handle the processing of all video-related tasks instead of the CPU for video processing (such as the drawing and coloring of filled polygons).
Due to a high price tag of around $5,500 and incompatibility with many programs and non-IBM systems during that time, it could not gain a significant hold on the industry. But, even then, the PGA did establish a standardized model for hardware 2D/3D acceleration as a separate on-board processor, marking an important step in GPU evolution to improve the framework...
