Nvidia to aquire Ageia

[Quakindude]

Linkage.

[Stormcrow]

Saw this one coming since Nvidia's partnership with Havok was messed up by the Intel buyout. Looks like they're gearing up for a GPGPU that can compete with Larrabee and Fusion.

[Capper]

It's official. NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AGEIA Technologies. As the acquisition remains subject to customary closing conditions, we have been bound by strict non disclosure / comment rules and were unable to reveal any information pertaining to this deal until NVIDIA itself made the announcement. For more info on the acquisition, please see http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1202161567170.html

Thanks,
Marti

[azianai]

so that means the useless physx card will become another GPU =D lol

[Quakindude]

Originally Posted by azianai

so that means the useless physx card will become another GPU =D lol

Pritty much.

Don't you have an Ageia card?


J/K'ing bro.

[azianai]

Originally Posted by Quakindude

Pritty much.

Don't you have an Ageia card?


J/K'ing bro.

Ha i waste $$ but im not that wasteful. I'd soon go SLI b4 i use the physx crap =D And most people know by now i think SLI is a pure waste of $$

[Stormcrow]

The Physx technology will be integrated onto the GPU much to the same as Nvidia's in-house Quantum Effects are now. Since the standard 8800 has more processing power in certain applications then a quad core CPU, all the extra horsepower will go to rendering the in-game physics that's normally loaded onto the CPU.

I think it works something like this for example, don't quote me on this as Nvidia is always changing things around:

9800GTX->Primary card
9800GTX->Secondary card SLI'd
9600GT-> Third card on it's own not connected with a SLI bridge, used solely as a physics processing workhorse.

Of course the 9600GT can be any card that's capable of this, but I'm using it as a reference as I doubt someone will really want to shell out big bucks for just a physics processor. In a way, this works exactly like Ageia's Physx card except with far more widespread impact as the game doesn't need special drivers or be compatible in order to offload the physics calculations onto the third GPGPU/PPU. That, and the 9600 would be able to render and calculate far more effectively then the Physx could.
Nvidia originally wanted to do this with Havok, which has been around the game physics field forever, but before they could seal the deal Intel bought them out most likely to do the same thing for Larrabee.

Right now, a single 8800 handles the graphics AND some physics calculations through Quantum Effects. If Nvidia carries this new setup into the 9 series, then a single 9800GTX would be able to handle graphics and some physics like the 8 series, but a setup following the outline above could have an 9800GTX handling the graphics, and a 9600GT handling almost all the physics (quite possibly AA/AF as well if they decide to outsource that from the main card as well).

I see a greater benefit for this then the SLI interface which is all but a marketing scheme, however Nvidia could change all this and use Ageia's technology mainly for it's Tesla units and do something else. Who knows with them, I've read so many changes in their direction over the past 2 years what I typed up above could be already outdated so like I said, don't quote me on it.

[gvblake22]

There are probably several ways nVidia can implement Physics. Stormcrow's way is probably one (although ATI already tried to promote a similar setup with their cards a while back). Another could be to integrate some kind of a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) right onto the GPU core (like the integrated memory controller on Athlon 64 and Phenom Processors). nVidia could also conceivably put both the PPU and the GPU on the same PCB as separate dies (like the HD3870 X2).

This is a very interesting development though, and I really hope they can find a way to integrate extra physics in games without killing performance!

[OcciferFriendly]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

This is a very interesting development though, and I really hope they can find a way to integrate extra physics in games without killing performance!

+1

And I'd add they'll need to push the game makers to really integrate physics effects into their games that matter.

[azianai]

Originally Posted by OcciferFriendly

+1

And I'd add they'll need to push the game makers to really integrate physics effects into their games that matter.

The problem with this will be the same issue with SLI/Crossfire. Game devs will not infest millions of $$ to satisfy a small niche of the market. I dont know the exact stats, but i'm pretty comfortable saying SLI/Crossfire makes up for at most 10% of all Computer gamers. Why would you spend that $$ on research and development to develop a game that only reaches that little of the market. The model that Blizzard has taken with their games being able to run at low settings and still run pretty and enjoyable is the model most companies would go with. I doubt World of Warcraft or even Starcraft back in the day would've been that big of a hit if it required SLI or Physx