NVIDIA Acquires AGEIA: Enlightenment and the Death of the PPU
by Derek Wilson on February 12, 2008 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Face of the Competition
The Enemy of My Enemy Is What Now?
Who is NVIDIA's competition when it comes to their burgeoning physics business? It's certainly not AMD now that Havok is owned by Intel, and with the removal of AGEIA, we've got one option left: Intel itself.
Sure, maybe a developer could write his/her own physics engine directly for AMD GPUs, but that isn't going to go very far very quickly. That kind of project takes time. The bottom line is that without the support of a physics engine, AMD's GPUs can't be realistically thought of as a viable alternative to CPU based physics. While their CPUs will certainly benefit from whatever agenda Intel has with Havok, AMD doesn't have the same luxury Intel does of ignoring (directing?) the impact of its actions on the graphics market.
With Intel's march down the multi-threaded path towards their proposed many core architectures, NVIDIA has to be feeling at least a little heat. They need to expand their own relevance to push out of the graphics box into the grey area between many single threaded cores and true parallel computing. There are plenty of ways to do this, and if they establish themselves now it will be easier to fight the battles they may be presented with when CPU and GPU eventually meet again somewhere in between many cores that handle single threaded dependent code well and true massively parallel computing.
A Cold Front Moving Through Hell
While not stating that anything is in the works and even noting that it would be hard to logistically organize, NVIDIA's Tony Tamasi stated that they are committed to working with any of their competitors in the GPU market to get PhysX running on their hardware. The major concern is to put more powerful physics options in the hands of developers, and having PhysX enable hardware accelerated physics on any GPU would set the stage for a physics revolution. We would see developers actually start to push the limits of the hardware because everyone would have access to it.
And, more importantly from NVIDIA's perspective, it would put advanced physics out of reach of current CPU architectures. Even though a GPU may not be as well suited to physics as dedicated hardware, a modern CPU is vastly inferior to both. Getting more developers to implement PhysX, selling them on the pervasiveness of hardware support, and bringing a more impactful user experience to gamers could help push PhysX past Havok in the physics market.
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kilkennycat - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
Larrabee...Marketing speak for Intel's GPU-killer wannabee. Now about 2 years out? ROTFL.....recoiledsnake - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
Isn't DirectX 11 supposed to ship with physics support? AMD/ATI has said accelerated physics is dead till DirectX 11 comes out, and I tend to agree with them.http://news.softpedia.com/news/GPU-Physics-Dead-an...">http://news.softpedia.com/news/GPU-Phys...nd-Burie...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20...
I am shocked that the author didn't even mention DirectX 11 in this two page article.
PrinceGaz - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
OpenPL would be better than a MS dependent solution like DirectPhysics. AFAIK though, no work is being done towards developing an OpenPL standard.It's a shame that CUDA is nVidia specific as otherwise it might be viable as a starting-point for OpenPL development.
mlambert890 - Thursday, February 14, 2008 - link
Why? I mean really. Why would some theoretical "OpenPL" be "better"? Unless you have some transformational OSS agenda, it wouldnt be.Come back to practical reality. Im sure its important to niche Linux fans or the small Mac installed base that everything be NOT based on DirectX, so go ahead and spark that up.
For (literally) 90+% of gamers, DirectX works out just fine and DirectPhysics *will* be the best solution.
A theoretical "OpenPL" would be the same as OpenGL. Marginally supported on the PC, loudly and often rudely evangelized by the OSS holy warriors and, ultimately, not all that much different from a proprietary API in practical application when put in context *on Windows*.
Griswold - Thursday, February 14, 2008 - link
If I build the church, will you come and preach it?MrKaz - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
"Who is NVIDIA's competition when it comes to their burgeoning physics business? It's certainly not AMD now that Havok is owned by Intel, and with the removal of AGEIA, we've got one option left: Intel itself. "I think you are wrong. Microsoft is the principal actor of this “useful technology”.
If Microsoft adds physics to the DX11 API (or even some add-on to the DX10) with the processing done at CPU and/or GPU level AMD will not lose nothing. In fact any Intel/Havok or Nvidia/Ageia implementation might not be even supported. So there goes the Intel and Nvidia investment down the drain.
Of course you are right by excluding Microsoft now because they didn’t show anything yet while Ageia and Havok have real products. But I think it is all up to DirectX.
Resuming I think it’s all up to Microsoft for physics to succeed because I don’t see different implementations to succeed or to get support from developers.
In the end AMD might even have the final word if get to use the Intel version or the Nvidia version ;) or wait for Microsoft…
Mr Alpha - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
Two things that weren't discussed that should have been:1.
We are already GPU limited in most games, so where exactly are we supposed to get this processing power for physics from? Will I in the future have to buy a second 8800GTX for $500, instead of a PhysX card for $99, like I can do now?
2.
Hasn't there been some rumours about Direct Physics, where Microsoft does vendor neutral, GPU accelerated physics?
spidey81 - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
I could be mistaken on this, but hasn't Nvidia decided to start putting onboard graphics on ALL motherboards with their chipsets? Wouldn't that be a great way to have a second GPU to handle physics. Albeit, it may be an underpowered GPU, but it may work well enough to offload physics from the CPU. Like it was pointed out, beats having that horsepower sitting there going to waste.7Enigma - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
I had the same question until I re-read the "official" position of Nvidia. They don't plan (for mainstream market) to integrate the chip into upcoming gfx cards, rather its a technology they can keep in-house until the time arrives where it could be beneficial.At some point if/when physics becomes the norm instead of the feature, I could see the company offering a hybrid gfx chip as the higher-end part(s). Just imagine in 5 years the current AMD 3870X2 was a single high-end gpu, with an attached physics chip (using this as an example since IMO it had been the most effective dual chip solution in real-world performance to date, Nvidia's previous try not so much). That would be practical, again as long as the software is coded for it.
Here's hoping THAT is the future.....I don't want ANOTHER piece of equipment that requires upgrading at every new build.
wingless - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
Intel is going down in 2010! Thats all I'll say about that lol.Seriously though, if AMD manages to get on board with this PhysX thing, their Fusion CPU's and CrossfireX will make a helluva lot of sense. Think about GPU physics on the processor itself, motherboard north bridge, and GPU all adding their powers together to run games with tons of physics. An AMD/ATI or AMD/Nvidia box would make more gaming sense than using Intel CPU/GPU's. This could be a big help to the ailing AMD right now...