[Dave Baumann]

Cg Momentum Increasing In The Developer Community
NVIDIA to Propose Cg-Based High Level Language to OpenGL ARB

LONDON - JULY 26, 2002 - NVIDIA(r) Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced that Cg-"C" for graphics, a high-level shading language which NVIDIA developed in close collaboration with Microsoft(r) Corporation-has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm, developer adoption and market acceptance. A little over a month after Cg's official unveiling, the NVIDIA Cg Compiler and NVIDIA Cg Toolkit:

• Have been acquired by over 36,000 developers worldwide;
• Have inspired packed training workshops from both the developer and academic communities;
• Were used by leading software vendors such as Alias|Wavefront, Digital Immersion, Discreet and Softimage for implementations previewed at SIGGRAPH 2002.
• Have featured in a number of courses, workshops and presentations at SIGGRAPH 2002 in San Antonio.

In addition to worldwide developer support, members of the OpenGL(r) Architecture Review Board (ARB) working group gathered to help define the OpenGL shading language voted unanimously in favor of NVIDIA making a full language specification proposal based on the Cg Language Specification. Next month, NVIDIA will open source the NVIDIA Cg Compiler technology under a nonrestrictive, free license, making the Cg compiler code available to university researchers, programmers, console manufacturers, independent hardware vendors, and other interested parties.

"From developers, hardware companies, middleware and tool vendors-the interest in Cg has been enormous," said Kurt Akeley, creator of OpenGL and a graphics architect at NVIDIA. "We are delighted that the OpenGL ARB shading language working group has unanimously agreed to review our forthcoming proposal for a Cg based high level shading language."

First Cg Implementations Demonstrated in NVIDIA Booth at SIGGRAPH Having embraced Cg since its introduction, the digital content creation (DCC) developer community has worked quickly to incorporate Cg into their current development plans. Working directly with NVIDIA to speed their implementations, top content creation software vendors including Alias|Wavefront, Discreet and Softimage demonstrated their first Cg implementations publicly for the first time in the NVIDIA booth at SIGGRAPH 2002. The first Cg-based offerings will be available to DCC customers in upcoming versions of Alias|Wavefront Maya(r), Discreet 3ds max(tm), and Softimage SOFTIMAGE|XSI.

"The industry response has certainly validated the need for a higher level shading language," said Dan Vivoli, Vice President of Marketing at NVIDIA. "After the first Cg announcement, the traffic on our Web site jumped to six times its normal activity level in the first 24 hours, with nearly a half a million requests to download the toolkit in the first month."

In addition to the aforementioned leading developers, a host of other independent software vendors are actively taking advantage of NVIDIA technology to implement the Cg programming language. Digital Immersion Software Corp., an industry leader in photo-realistic product communication, today announced Presenter 3D(tm) version 1.1 for Autodesk Inventor with real-time rendering made possible with Cg. Aimed squarely at simplicity of operation to increase the mechanical computer-aided design engineer's productivity, this new Cg-infused version of Presenter 3D plugs directly into Autodesk Inventor.

Interactive Data Visualization (IDV), a developer of real-time nature tools for film, video and game developers, was also debuting its Cg-enabled SpeedTree product line during SIGGRAPH 2002. By rapidly integrating Cg into their OpenGL graphics engine in the days following Cg availability, IDV was able to deliver compelling special effects, such as realistic swaying trees, adjustable wind, dynamic shadows and running water on a very tight development schedule.

Worldwide Cg Training Events Booming
Developers, scholars and researchers have also consumed Cg programming training events with a voracious appetite. Over 200 developers attended The Gathering in the UK last month, and over 130 3D artists, programmers and sound experts from top game developers such as Microsoft Studios, Ritual Entertainment, Terminal Reality, NCSoft, Novalogic and 3D Realms attended NVIDIA's Deep Fry hands-on Cg training event in Austin, Texas held earlier this month. Pre-registration for NVIDIA's 12 Cg Shader Workshops at SIGGRAPH 2002 was also quickly overwhelmed. NVIDIA increased the number of course offerings with evening sessions to meet high developer demand.

"I'm very excited about Cg because it allows us to actually write high level shaders that are much easier to create and takes less time to do the really cool effects," added Doug Service, Director of Technology at Ritual Entertainment.

Over 30 Universities Participate In NVIDIA-U Workshop
NVIDIA also hosted its NVIDIA-U event July 18-29 in San Antonio, Texas immediately prior to SIGGRAPH to offer university educators, researchers and graduate students a workshop covering next-generation GPUs, Cg programming and real-time rendering technology. This well-attended event included scholars from respected universities such as Caltech, GeorgiaTech, Purdue University, Stanford University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Universitat Stuttgart, and University of Tokyo.

About Cg
Emerging as the "C" for graphics, the industry-standard Cg Language Specification was developed in close collaboration with Microsoft Corporation and is compatible with Microsoft's recently announced High Level Shading Language for DirectX( 9.0. The Cg Language gives content developers a new level of abstraction, removing the need for them to program directly to the graphics hardware assembly language, and thereby more easily target OpenGL, DirectX 8.0 and DirectX 9.0.

In June, NVIDIA announced the NVIDIA Cg Toolkit, comprised of the NVIDIA Cg Compiler 1.0, optimized for DirectX and OpenGL; the NVIDIA Cg Browser, a prototyping/visualization environment with a large library of Cg shaders; a CgFX file format; the Cg Standard Library; and a collection of pre-written Cg shaders which can be used for a variety of applications, ranging from game development to digital content creation and computer-aided design. The NVIDIA Cg Toolkit and other user documentation can be downloaded at http://developer.nvidia.com/cg.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq - NVDA), located in Santa Clara, CA, is the global leader in advanced graphics and multimedia processing technology for the consumer and professional computing markets. Its 2D, 3D, video and multimedia capabilities make NVIDIA one of the premier semiconductor companies in the world. NVIDIA offers a wide range of products and services, delivering superior performance and crisp visual quality for PC-based applications such as manufacturing, science, e-business, entertainment and education.