Famous Graphics Chips: Geometry Engine

Although not really a graphics chip in that it directly manipulated any pixels, the Geometry Engine introduced in 1981 was a breakthrough in VLSI of critical mathematics functions used for graphics. The Geometry Engine was a special-purpose processor with a four-component vector, floating-point processor for three basic operations in computer graphics: matrix transformations, clipping, and mapping to output device coordinates. Developed by Jim Clark and Marc Hannah at Stanford University in about 1981, it was the first dedicated vertex processor for what has since become a commoditized element in contemporary GPUs of all types. Clark took the device and formed