X-bit labs

Ageia Goes Green: The Future of Ageia PhysX Discussed (page 3)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 02/05/2008 | 11:38 PM ]

X-bit labs: Will there be any PhysX-branded physics accelerators based on Nvidia GeForce GPUs that will not be intended for graphics, but will be designed strictly for physics acceleration?

Michael Steele: At this early stage, I can't say for sure what all the final products will look like.  I can say that we are committed to adding GPUs as a great way to enable PhysX.

X-bit labs: Can you compare performance of PhysX PPU against Nvidia GeForce GPU; say, vs. GeForce 8600 GTS or GeForce 8800 GT?

Michael Steele: Again, it’s too soon to comment on the specifics. We’re convinced that Nvidia enables the world's best GPU’s for a variety of entertainment and general-purpose applications and will continue to evolve the processor architecture to address a growing number of new applications like physics. Ageia is an expert at enabling multithreaded hardware-accelerated physics in any form. Together, we will develop the best physics-enabled platforms with our next-generation software and hardware.

Allegedly next-generation Ageia PhysX add-on-board

It is interesting to note that back in August ’07 several picture of what was claimed to be a next-generation dedicated physics accelerator from Ageia were published on the Internet. For some reason, the board featured a cooling system with Nvidia logotype on it as well as a SLI-like interface.

It should also be noted that video games will hardly start to support GPU physics overnight: development cycles last for years and quality implementation of a feature requires this feature to be a part of the project from day one. Therefore, one could hardly expect high-quality titles to utilize GeForce-accelerated PhysX or PPU-accelerated PhysX shortly after the transaction between Ageia and Nvidia takes place.