NVIDIA Launches New SLI Physics Technology

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NVIDIA Launches New SLI Physics Technology

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday March 20, 2006 @08:07AM from the volunteer-rendering dept.

Thomas Hines writes "NVIDIA just launched a new SLI Physics technology. It offloads the physics processing from the CPU to the graphics card. According to the benchmark, it improves the frame rate by more than 10x. Certainly worth investing in SLI if it works."

8 of 299 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

All the answers to your questions... by temojen · 2006-03-20 08:16 · Score: 5, Informative

www.gpgpu.org
not limited to NVIDIA chips by Anonymous Coward · 2006-03-20 08:17 · Score: 3, Informative

This neither requires SLI nor is it limited to NVIDIA chips. NVIDIA is just launching it publicly. ATI will be showing it off behind closed doors this week.
Re:SLI? by Aranth+Brainfire · 2006-03-20 08:20 · Score: 3, Informative

It doesn't, according to the article.

--
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Re:I don't understand? by robbyjo · 2006-03-20 08:23 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, I for one, want to have a smarter AI in all games. Unloading the "mundane" physics engine to the graphic card will hopefully spare more CPU cycles for the AI. After all, it's not graphics that matter in games. It's the gameplay.

--

--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Re:Before people get too excited... by LLuthor · 2006-03-20 08:26 · Score: 5, Informative

given than GPU->CPU readbacks are a notorious perfomance killer.

That has not been true for a long long time. Since PCIe became a standard, bidirectional communication between CPUs and GPUs has been as easy as unidirectional communication.

--
LL
Re:You know what... by BewireNomali · 2006-03-20 08:41 · Score: 3, Informative

Soviet Russia was very technically progressive. While being bad for the consumer, as it were, communism or socialism isn't necessarily bad for innovation.

--
un burrito me trampeó.
Re:Slashdotted - How wide are the floats? by Anpheus · 2006-03-20 15:05 · Score: 3, Informative

Fortunately for you, the errors at this scale will be less than 6E-8 of the most significant digit. An HL/HL2 map is usually scaled in units between -4000 and 4000, so your error might be about 0.00024. The player model is less precise than this. The hit box is even less precise. You will incur more error simply due to the fact that your mouse cursor only moves by a single pixel increment at a time which could be significant at a low resolution. In short, you missed because you can't aim, or because you lagged. If I were you, I'd yell LAGGGGGG. A lot. Over and over.
We already have that patent by Animats · 2006-03-20 17:29 · Score: 3, Informative

We already have that patent. For some years, we were locked into a licensing and noncompete agreement, which is why we haven't done much in that area for a while except cash the checks. But that noncompete period is now over. Stay tuned for further developments.
Our approach produces better-looking movement than the low-end physics packages. We don't have the "boink problem", where everything bounces as if it were very light. Heavy objects look heavy. Our physics has "ease in" and "ease out" in collisions, as animators put it, derived directly from the real physics. When we first did this, back in the 200MHz era, it was slow for real time (a two-player fighter was barely possible) but now, game physics can get better.
Take a look at our videos. Few if any other physics systems can even do the spinning top correctly, let alone the hard cases shown.