Nvidia's Quest to become a Platform Company
 

For years the competitive landscape between the major PC semiconductor companies was quite predictable. NVIDIA was in a somewhat of a horse race with ATI -- a horse race where the winner was the one who didn’t break a leg. The way I saw it, NVIDIA was always responsible for either winning or losing the race. In other words, ATI kept “plugging away,” and whenever NVIDIA “broke a leg” ATI would catch up -- and at least once they passed NVIDIA for a brief period.

Not taking away anything from ATI, but the bottom line is if it weren’t for NVIDIA, gaming would have been boring – NVIDIA pushed the industry to dream bigger.

http://www.rahulsood.com/2007/06/nvi...-platform.html