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World's First Physics Processing Unit
Duane writes "Gamers Depot has an exclusive interview with the team behind Ageia - the maker of the world's first Physics Processing Unit (PPU) - which was just announced today.
"Sure we've all heard about the CPU and GPU - that's old hat by now and as most hardware reviewers will tell you, it's about time we got something that's truly revolutionary. Yeah, Pixel shaders are cool, and can do a lot of really nice things; however, pale in comparison in scope to what the PhysX chip from Ageia has the potential to bring to gaming.""
...right here. It doesn't really say anything, though - just a few pages that recap physics usage in games, and then a paragraph about how they're going to change all that, etc.
Didn't white papers use to be heavy on technical content? Now it seems that "white paper" just means "nicely formatted eight page PDF advertisement"....
The Army reading list
Note that no-where in the press release does it say that this is a shipping product. Before you get all excited about the promise of this product, realize that this chip may never see the light of day. A press release does not a product make, regardless of how cool the product might be.
Someone explain to me why I need to purchase a *slower* processor with less ram to do it for me? The money would always be better spent on a faster processor...
Yeah, just look how a 3.7GHz P4 with an intergrated graphics chipset outperforms a 2.4GHz P4 with a high end $500 graphics card.
Oh wait... it doesn't.
Not really.
:)
You could have said the exact same thing about graphics with the advent of hardware 3D accelerators, yet games certainly haven't all ended up looking the same. If anything they're able to look *more* varied now thanks to the extra power allowing neat tricks like cell shading and real time effects.
In the same way GPUs (initially, at least) sped up all the graphics things that all 3D games have in common (triangles, texturing, lighting, etc), this will presumably speed up all the physics things all games have in common (collisions, velocities, etc)
That doesn't necessarily mean they all have to act the same. As a programmer you still get to determine exactly what happens when something collides, or how it behaves when it's crushed. It's just that you have access to much more power, and in the same way that gets us neat tricks on GPUs I think we'd see the same with these PPUs.
The important thing is that this takes care of all the low level stuff, giving the developers more time and power to spend on the higher level areas where they can really be creative.
Incidentally, am I the only one here saying "about time" with this? I had this idea the moment I saw the first Voodoo card. I'd have done something with it, but I figured it was so damn obvious everyone else would've thought of it too. That, and I'm just plain lazy
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that a holodeck-like experience does seem to be what both gamers and developers have set up in their minds as the "holy grail" of video games. I think in the near future, we're going to see real innovation in physics engines to use ray-tracing-like lighting affects and real particle collisions instead of the pre-programmed tricks used today. I think for the transition we're in for, it probably would be appropriate to compare the transition to the sort of change we saw between the fake 3D of Duke Nukem 3D to the [more] real 3D of Quake.
However, what remains to be seen is whether those games will be more fun.
There really should be a -1: Unfunny mod.