AGEIA, the world’s first designer of desktop-oriented processor intended for boosting performance of physics on personal computers, announced Monday that its technology is supported by Avid Technology, which develops popular professional application for 3D design SOFTIMAGE|XSI.

“Gamers consistently demand ever-greater levels of realism in characters and environments, and AGEIA is meeting that demand by introducing a completely new category of hardware physics, which gives XSI as much as a 100x performance improvement in physics simulation,” said Gareth Morgan, senior product manager for Softimage.

AGEIA’s PhysX is the world’s first Physics Processing Unit (PPU), which offloads software physics processing from central processing units and graphics processing units to it. The architecture of the PhysX PPU is tailored for multi-threaded processing of vertexes, which allows game creators to develop detailed, soft and precise animation and simulation of movements, hair, clothing, liquids, fluids and other. Currently AGEIA PhysX is the world’s first and only dedicated physics processing unit, but the company expects more startups to offer similar technology.

Artists have created some of the most memorable game characters using SOFTIMAGE|XSI software, and their real-time interactivity will increase with XSI v.5.0 by taking advantage of AGEIA’s state-of-the-art physics simulation engine for rigid body dynamics and high-precision actual-shape collision handling, representatives for Avid believe. In addition, Softimage plans to offer support for hardware-accelerated simulation using the AGEIA physX processor.

“AGEIA’s solution enhances the ability of artists using SOFTIMAGE|XSI to create next-generation titles that offer gamers a realistic, immersive, entertainment experience,” Mr. Morgan added.