NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA

The two companies announced today that NVIDIA will acquire PhysX maker AGEIA; terms were not disclosed. The Daily Tech is one of the few covering the news to go much beyond the press release, mentioning that AMD considered buying AGEIA last November but passed, and that the combination positions NVIDIA to compete with Intel on a second front, beyond the GPU — as Intel purchased AGEIA competitor Havok last September. While NVIDIA talked about supporting the PhysX engine on their GPUs, it's not clear whether AGEIA's hardware-based physics accelerator will play any part in that. AMD declared GPU physics dead last year, but NVIDIA at least presumably begs to differ. The coverage over at PC Perspectives goes into more depth on what the acquisition portends for the future of physics, on the GPU or elsewhere.

Comments

Must bundle with GPU

[Macfox]

This won't float unless they bundle it with the next generation GPU. AGEIA haven't been able to get traction with a dedicated card and neither will nVidia, unless a heap of games support it overnight.

Re:Must bundle with GPU

[Kyrubas]

It might be that nVidia doesn't even intend to use the overall PhysX stuff at all, but instead wants to tear it apart for the patents on specific design patents further optimization of their GPUs.

Whither Nvidia/PhysX?

[Crypto Gnome]

1. Purchase Aegia
2. Continue selling dedicated Physics addon-cards
3. Integrate PPU onto Graphics Cards
4. (somewhere along the line, get full Microsoft Direct-Something endorsement/support of dedicated physics processing)
   • possibly by licensing to AMD "PPU included on Graphics Card" rights, thusly invoking the power of Least Common Denominator
5. Integrate PPU circuitry/logics into GPU (making it faster/more efficient/cheaper than equivalent solution licensed to AMD)
6. ?? Profit ??

In the end, for this to *really* succeed, it needs to be a "Least Common Denominator" factor. So it *requires* full support by Microsoft and Direct-X (them being The Big Factors in the games industry). And in order to get full support from The Windows Monopolist, you'll probably (not absolutely necessary, mut it'd make it much easier to convince Microsoft) need to enable AMD/ATI to leverage this technology, to some degree.

Remember folks, Nvidia don't need to *kill* AMD/ATI, they only need to stay one or two generations ahead of them in technology. So they *could* license them "last years tech" for use on their cards, to make "Least Common Denominator" not a factor which excludes their latest-get tech implementations.

Re:Why do we need physics cards?

[NeMon'ess]

With physics acceleration, the little things that don't feel real could be done.

Running through grass could cause it to deform and brush the character, and some of it gets stepped on and stays bent down. Or in sports games, each limb could have a better defined clipping box and rules for how it can flex.

Then when two players collide going for a ball, they hit more realistically and don't clip through each other. Especially on the slow motion replays it would look nice.

Or in a racing game, when cars crash, they could really crash. Imagine bodywork deforming and "real" parts going flying, instead of only a flash of sparks.

Also, it would be cool for grenades and other explosives to properly damage the room and buildings in games that want realism. Walls that crumble into rubble. Tables that break into chunks and splinters. Ceilings that collapse when the supports are destroyed or weakened too much.

Then outside, no more indestructible walls. When I ram a truck or tank into an unreinforced building, something actually happens. As in the vehicle crashes through the wall, or continues through the building with momentum.