The Tech Report has some
skinny from NVIDIA about their plans for PhysX following their acquisition of
AGEIA (
story) that were revealed in a Q&A that followed their
fourth-quarter financial results conference call. It sounds like speculation
that there will be no more dedicated PhysX cards is accurate, but NVIDIA
CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says the PhysX engine will be ported to CUDA (Compute Unified
Device Architecture) which will allow it to be run on GeForce 8 cards:
We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we
intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if
it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason
is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is
CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every
one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA.
Our expectation is that this is gonna encourage people to buy even better GPUs.
It might—and probably will—encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI
slot. And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs.
Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two
for physics.