NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist David Kirk Honored for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

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Susan Austin 
NVIDIA Corporation  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SIGGRAPH 2002 — SAN ANTONIO, TX — JULY 24, 2002 — NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced its Chief Scientist and Vice President of Architecture, David Kirk, Ph.D., was honored by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization with a prestigious Computer Graphics Achievement Award for outstanding achievement in computer graphics and interactive techniques.  Since 1983, ACM SIGGRAPH has bestowed this award to just one exemplary individual per year.  Dr. Kirk joins an esteemed list of past award winners that includes SGI founders Jim Clark and Kurt Akeley; Stanford University Professor Marc Levoy; Pixar Animation Studios Senior Scientist Anthony D. DeRose; and Adobe Systems Co-founder and Chairman Dr. John E. Warnock.

“This year, ACM SIGGRAPH chose to recognize Dr. David Kirk with the Computer Graphics Achievement Award for his key technical role in bringing high-performance computer graphics systems to the mass market,” said ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Chair Ed Catmull.  “Over the last 20 years, Dr. Kirk has born out to be a significant force in the advancement of the state of the art in computer graphics and he shows no signs of slowing down.”

“I am very honored to be named to the distinguished company of the Computer Graphics Achievement Award recipients who have come before me,” said Dr. Kirk.  “I feel fortunate to work for a company that has built an environment that attracts the world’s best engineering talents and fosters a culture of innovation and excellence.  I am especially proud of the accomplishments of our technical team and gratefully accept this award on their behalf for the vast contributions we have made as a team to the 3D graphics industry.”

As chief scientist for NVIDIA, Dr. Kirk is responsible for defining the vision and the features for the company’s next generation hardware architecture.  He has also driven development of the RIVA128™, RIVA™ TNT, GeForce™, GeForce2, GeForce3 and GeForce4 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for NVIDIA.  Prior to NVIDIA, Dr. Kirk was a chief scientist and head of technology for Crystal Dynamics, a video game development company.  From 1985 to 1991, he was an engineer designing workstation graphics hardware for Apollo Computer and HP.  A frequent industry speaker, Dr. Kirk holds 17 patents relating to graphics design and has authored over 100 technical publications on computer graphics and hardware.  Dr. Kirk also edited the book, Graphics Gems III.  Dr. Kirk holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He also has M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the California Institute of Technology.

About ACM
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students.  ACM serves its global membership of 75,000 by delivering cutting edge technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Portal to Computing Literature.  With its journals and magazines, special interest groups, conferences, workshops and electronic forums, ACM is a primary resource to the information technology field.  For additional information, see www.acm.org.

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.
 
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