Futuremark Corp., the developer of industry leading 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks, recently announced it had licensed AGEIA PhysX software development kit (SDK) in order to add physics benchmarking capability into its performance measurement tools.

“Physics performance is becoming an increasingly important factor in games, and the AGEIA PhysX SDK will enable us to create reliable standards for measuring not only software, but also hardware accelerated physics,” said Tero Sarkkinen, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Futuremark.

Currently it is unknown whether there is a separate software suit to measure physics performance, e.g., PhysicsMark, or Futuremark is going to integrate physics measuring tool into its popular 3DMark and PCMark product series.

“Our testing methodology used to create Futuremark benchmarks is developed in close cooperation with PC technology industry leaders, and we look forward to working with AGEIA to enable extensive physics in our future products with the high levels of accuracy and usability that people expect from Futuremark,” Mr. Sarkkinen added.

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.

In conjunction with its PPU, AGEIA also supplies NovodeX software, which helps game designers to utilise the power of multi-threaded PPU, or central processing units.