NVIDIA/AGEIA Q&A

[Feb 05, 2008, 11:18 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The NVIDIA AGEIA PhysX Acquisition Q&A on FiringSquad talks with NVIDIA's Derek Perez about the acquisition of AGEIA, a fellow all-caps hardware company. He uses the same "heterogeneous computing model" phrase used yesterday to announce the move (story), an interesting take, since it sounds like they plan to homogenize AGEIA's PPU onto their GPUs, saying "Physics is a natural for processing on the GPU." As for existing stand-alone PhysX cards, he says: "We will continue to support the current line of Ageia products that are on the market today."

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14.

Re: I wanna get

Feb 5, 2008, 21:16

Enahs

Physics are probably more complex than graphics.

Sure they are, if you want to create a real to life simulation for scientific modeling. The simple Newtonian mathematics I talked about in my previous post start getting really complicated.

Not for gaming. Things can be super simplified; as you eluded to. It is about representing something on a screen as what we expect to happen. In the calculation of the traction of a car on asphalt, we can represent the surface of the tire as flat. In the real world, depending on how far the wheels are turned, the rotational speed of the tires, the angle of the street surface, the temperature of the tire, etc, all effect the area of tire in contact with the street surface; and thus traction. None of this is required for an accurate representation in a game of the physics of a tire on asphalt.

Where as those simplifications can not be made in graphics. Example, in games where there is dynamic lighting and the light source hits a wall; but there is no reflection from that wall lighting up other parts in the room. That is obvious and looks horrible to us. That next step of multiple reflections from surfaces is needed to represent the game. And a surface that only reflects light at one angle is also really obvious and horrible looking.

Sure physics is complicated, but in a gaming environment, even to have amazing physics, at a mathematical level it is not as resource intensive and graphics.

It is just done on the CPU currently; which has to do tons of other things. Including telling the GPU what in the hell to do. And in many ways (but not in all) modern GPU's are more complex then modern CPU's.

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This comment was edited on Feb 5, 21:20.




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		Date	Subject	Author
	1.	Feb 5, 10:33	As for existing stand-alone PhysX cards	MMORPGHoD
	3.	Feb 5, 12:37	Re: As for existing stand-alone PhysX ca	famished
	4.	Feb 5, 13:36	Re: As for existing stand-alone PhysX ca	kimbambaman
	18.	Feb 6, 09:56	Re: As for existing stand-alone PhysX ca	shul
	22.	Feb 13, 09:09	Re: As for existing stand-alone PhysX ca	kimbambaman
	24.	Feb 14, 08:16	Re: As for existing stand-alone PhysX ca	shul
	2.	Feb 5, 12:35	Derek Perez....	Toebot
	5.	Feb 5, 13:59	No subject	necrosis
	6.	Feb 5, 14:33	Re: No subject	MuzixMon
	19.	Feb 6, 10:01	Re: No subject	shul
	7.	Feb 5, 15:51	I wanna get	LittleMe
	8.	Feb 5, 16:16	Re: I wanna get	HardCore
	9.	Feb 5, 17:39	Re: I wanna get	PHJF
	10.	Feb 5, 18:09	Re: I wanna get	Agent.X7
	13.	Feb 5, 21:07	Re: I wanna get	Enahs
	11.	Feb 5, 19:23	Re: I wanna get	HardCore
	12.	Feb 5, 21:05	Re: I wanna get	DrEvil
>>	14.	Feb 5, 21:16	Re: I wanna get	Enahs
	15.	Feb 5, 23:19	Re: I wanna get	DrEvil
	16.	Feb 6, 04:03	Re: I wanna get	PHJF
	20.	Feb 6, 19:23	Re: I wanna get	Enahs
	21.	Feb 7, 13:54	Re: I wanna get	DrEvil
	23.	Feb 14, 08:14	Re: I wanna get	shul
	17.	Feb 6, 08:39	No subject	dryden555