NVIDIA is now one of nine permanent board members, the other being 3Dlabs, ATI, Evans & Sutherland, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and SGI. NVIDIA had been a term member. Apple, Dell Computer, Matrox, and Sun are term members. A term member still has a vote, but is on 1-year membership. This is a bit like the UN, as the permanent members vote (in closed sessions) on whom to admit as a permanent or term member. It comes as a bit of a surprise that NVIDIA wasn’t a permanent member before this. It also brings to mind “why now” questions. There was some contention between the ARB and NVIDIA over Cg and the GL Shading Language, with NVIDIA pushing an NVIDIA-centric Cg featureset and some others pushing anything but Cg.
Nonvoting participants include (as of June 2002) Alt. software, Crytek GmbH, Discreet, Empire Interactive, Ensemble Studios, Epic Games, GLSetup (which tells you this is an old list), id Software, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Intelligraphics, Micron, NEC, Obsession Development, Quantum3D, RAD Game Tools, Raven Software, S3/Diamond Multimedia, SiS, Spinor GmbH, Tungsten Graphics, University of Central Florida, Verant Interactive, and Xi Graphics. Microsoft quit the ARB to focus on DirectX issues.