They spent a lot of time and money first building motherboard chipsets[1] with on-board GPUs for AMD CPUs only to have CMD buy ATI.
Then they started a program to build their own x86 CPU[2] which Intel sued them over[3]. There was a counter suite, and the EU settlement around the same time and Intel ended up paying NVidia $1.5B3[3] which was often read a win for NVidia. Of course in retrospect it gave Intel another 10 years of CPU domination.
So then NVidia announced they were building a desktop ARM processor[5]. That went pretty much nowhere. So then there was their mobile play (the Tegra)[6]. That was supposed to let them dominate mobile phones, and went just about as well as their launch partner phone (the Microsoft Kin). It has found use in robotics (the NVidia Jetson series) and cars (the Telsa model 3) though.
So they've lost a bunch of fights, and outside GPUs it really has been cut throat.
FYI, Nintendo Switch is Tegra based as well. 61 million units isn't bad, and there are significantly more Tegras in use in Switch consoles than in Jetson boards or even Telsas (~1 million).
They spent a lot of time and money first building motherboard chipsets[1] with on-board GPUs for AMD CPUs only to have CMD buy ATI.
Then they started a program to build their own x86 CPU[2] which Intel sued them over[3]. There was a counter suite, and the EU settlement around the same time and Intel ended up paying NVidia $1.5B3[3] which was often read a win for NVidia. Of course in retrospect it gave Intel another 10 years of CPU domination.
So then NVidia announced they were building a desktop ARM processor[5]. That went pretty much nowhere. So then there was their mobile play (the Tegra)[6]. That was supposed to let them dominate mobile phones, and went just about as well as their launch partner phone (the Microsoft Kin). It has found use in robotics (the NVidia Jetson series) and cars (the Telsa model 3) though.
So they've lost a bunch of fights, and outside GPUs it really has been cut throat.
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/828
[2] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/11570/nvidia_announces_x86_cp...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-intel-nvidia/intel-pays-n...
[4] https://www.anandtech.com/show/4122/intel-settles-with-nvidi...
[5] https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-05-nvidia-announces-project... arm-cpu-for-the-desktop.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra