arstechnica.com — Ars analyzes the mysterious PhysX PPU from Ageia and reveals that it's really a multicore architecture like IBM's Cell. In the course of the article, Ars also explains how companies like Ageia, IBM, NVIDIA, and ATI would like to use economies of scale from the gaming market to break into the supercomputer market.
Mar 13, 2007 View in Crawl 4
rattelerMar 14, 2007
Call me when it works for Linux.
nikokunMar 14, 2007
Personally... I think if PhysX cards want to have a future... they seriously need to think of other ways to do it... because as an Optional card, most people would skip it, and all the games have to have that feature as optional.What they SHOULD do... is merge PhysX cards with Graphics cards. Make it all part of 1 card, call it a gaming graphics card or something like that... make it easier for us to buy and figure out... Otherwise, PhysX, although a good idea, wont be much of a deal.
randomskratchMar 14, 2007
@acceptab1eunameThat's called game design, not limitation due to no extra processing. The reason why they did not include this type of thing in the game is because they designed it for multiplayer (online). Adding in real time environmental destruction (that isn't pre-canned) takes a lot of processing AND this also has to be sent to everyone else on the server.Now they are attempting to do such a thing with Bad Company (or whatever it's called) but we've yet to see actual game footage. I am going to presume it will use pre-canned destruction. I.e. create full building along with other sub models that include several layers of destruction.
diggfinityMar 14, 2007
I got one when they first came out only because I was ordering a PC on someone else's dime and figured "hey, what the hell...maybe it'll actually come in handy"... I'm still waiting to use it.
smedstadcMar 14, 2007
Three cheers for the well informed minority!
Closed AccountMar 14, 2007
Don't be silly. Nothing useful works for linux/sarc
j_belloneMar 14, 2007
Call me when the game developers take notice of this technology. Seriously. If Aegia wants to be taken seriously they should be lobbying the likes of Valve, Epic and id to get their technology included in the developer builds of those game engines. Those engines make up a massive number of games on the market currently and will be making up the number of games in the future. This card, even though targeted at gamers in general, will most likely fall onto the FPS gamers laps. Another reason to lobby Valve, Epic and id. When I start seeing AAA titles that support this card I will consider buying it. Until then they are merely another fish in the pond offering "better performance."Better at a marginal cost for a marginal (less than marginal) number of titles. They should have pushed hard to get their technology inside one of the consoles. Hopefully next time around (if they are still around) they will do so. The only way to push new technology is to get the people designing the technology to look at your hardware. The consumer is not going to buy something that *might* work with games in the future. They should be offering their SDK, examples and what not for FREE to developers. They should be going to developers and giving demonstrations. I don't want to hear this bulls**t about it being like CELL. Its nothing like CELL.
j_belloneMar 14, 2007
DVD decoders were beneficial until the graphics cards vendors started throwing them on the GPU. Deja Vu. Except this time around Aegia is only on a handful of games. We *need* this technology. But we *need* it to be mainstreamed. I for sure am not buying a card that could be obsoleted by the next generation of nVIDIA's or ATI's boards. Especially when I don't see any games that I am going to play that get a significant upgrade from the card. Not to mention the card costs just as much as another GIG of DDR2. Which would give me better performance overall.