[B3D News]

X-bit labs, via Newhua, have pictures of the next generation Ageia PhysX processor on PCI Express.




Read the full news item

[Himself]

"use something a bit less offensive to the year"

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Is anyone still excited by Ageia Physx in the face of ever increasing cores and processing power from Intel and AMD CPUs, and ever increasing cores and power from Nvidia and AMD GPUs?

If I was building a new PC any time in the next six months, I can't think of anything that would be bottom of my list of requirements under a PhysX board, especially given the massive lack of support we've seen for Ageia PhysX in upcoming games.

I just can't see any developer putting time and effort into this when they could be putting time into CPU cores or GPU boards. At least those can do more than one thing, and are guaranteed to exist inside every target PC in one form or another.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

Is anyone still excited by Ageia Physx in the face of ever increasing cores and processing power from Intel and AMD CPUs, and ever increasing cores and power from Nvidia and AMD GPUs?

Nope, not even in the slightest.

[hesido]

Why do they even bother...

Also, I am wondering, what is the overhead of sending thousands of object positions between this card and the gfx card? I'm guessing, a lot?

[fellix]

Hm, that bigger and longer die resembles two cores sliced together, just like Smithfield.
Longer PCB, external power plug, more heat & noise, less free expansion slots... damn, I'll just take a piece of Barcelona or Yorkfield next time, and skip this.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

Is anyone still excited by Ageia Physx in the face of ever increasing cores and processing power from Intel and AMD CPUs, and ever increasing cores and power from Nvidia and AMD GPUs?

I said it when the card came out and I believe it even more strongly now: there's nothing fundamentally unsuitable about physics for current GPUs, and even multicore CPUs can keep up nowadays.

Thus to be honest Ageia cannot compete with the efficiency and mass-market funding of GPUs... nor should they try! Physics can be done very efficiently on the GPU (or Cell SPEs) so it's better to just do it there, which allows load balancing between physics, graphics and other tasks (and reduces data movement). Having a CPU, GPU, PPU, AIPU and god knows what else simply means that you're going to *always* have a good percentage of your hardware idle.

Anyways I have a lot of respect for Ageia's physics SDK, etc. but this custom hardware path is a dead end IMHO. Unfortunately they're stuck with a business model that means either the hardware succeeds or the whole company is in trouble...

[nAo]

Their hw is going no where, imho they should re-focus on GPGPU applications and even GPGPU graphics (alternative rendering methods as ray tracing, reyes, etc..)

[AlStrong]

How is Havok doing right now

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

How is Havok doing right now

The big difference is that Havok is a middleware software product sold to software developers, whereas the Ageia business model relies on selling specialised hardware (in the form of the PhysX add-in board) to gamers.

PhysX is just not a compelling product in the current market, against competing hardware capable of the same job, and with the current low level of developer support in games.

[ShaidarHaran]

PCI-e x8/x16? What a horrible decision. They've shrunken their market for this product down to include only those that have a spare PEG slot, which basically means new-gen ultra-high-end 3/4 PEG slot boards or under-utilized dual-slot boards that don't have the 2nd slot populated. Should've gone with x1.

[Davros]

by "next generation Ageia PhysX processor" do you actually mean " the same Ageia PhysX processor just on on different bus ?"

they retail for £50 now (£150 when they first come out) although this could just be the retailer trying to get rid of stock

somewhere (sorry forgot the link) took another look at it and this time they sorta liked it they said it is now a physics accellerator whereas it used to be just a physics enabler ageia have sorted out the slowdowns and apparently games now run faster with the card instead of slowing down like they used to
but i cant see it taking off though escpecially with the poor performance of dx10 gfx cards are struggling now imagaine what it would be like if they are rendering many thousands of peices of debris

also got to agree whith shaidarharan they should of gone with pci-e 1x

ps: gfx card physics is that dead now ?

[Davros]

ps: maybe they should make a havok wrapper

[AnarchX]

Originally Posted by Davros

by "next generation Ageia PhysX processor" do you actually mean " the same Ageia PhysX processor just on on different bus ?"

Just look on the chip-size, if it is not in 130nm like the first PhysX and for example 90nm, than it has a much higher transitorcount and so more much more power.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

The big difference is that Havok is a middleware software product sold to software developers, whereas the Ageia business model relies on selling specialised hardware (in the form of the PhysX add-in board) to gamers.

PhysX is just not a compelling product in the current market, against competing hardware capable of the same job, and with the current low level of developer support in games.

mm....

One thing that is of interest is Epic's (somewhat) recent incorporation of PhysX into UE3.0, though I don't know if that is only for their own games or if licensees get that as well. Given how popular UE3.0 seems to be, the latter case may be enough to present competition with Havok. But then again, maybe Epic used PhysX because it was cheaper and not necessarily better in any way compared to Havok's software.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

mm....

One thing that is of interest is Epic's (somewhat) recent incorporation of PhysX into UE3.0, though I don't know if that is only for their own games or if licensees get that as well. Given how popular UE3.0 seems to be, the latter case may be enough to present competition with Havok. But then again, maybe Epic used PhysX because it was cheaper and not necessarily better in any way compared to Havok's software.

Looks like it's going to be a UT3 mod, so again very limited support that won't be standard.

Given that the vast majority of the online community that Epic will try to build with UT3 won't have PhysX boards, I don't see it having much impact.

I don't see why any gamer would spend money on Ageia ahead of a faster CPU with more cores, or a second GPU, or more memory, etc, and these will all have a bigger impact on the whole gameplaying experience.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

mm....

One thing that is of interest is Epic's (somewhat) recent incorporation of PhysX into UE3.0, though I don't know if that is only for their own games or if licensees get that as well. Given how popular UE3.0 seems to be, the latter case may be enough to present competition with Havok. But then again, maybe Epic used PhysX because it was cheaper and not necessarily better in any way compared to Havok's software.

My understanding is that their Novodex(sp?) stuff is actually quite solid(that's the name of their SDK AFAIR), asides from being free, and it actually does a number of things better than Havok does. The trouble for Ageia, as someone pointed out above, is that whilst their SDK is solid, it's also free, and a developer using it isn't exactly forced to code for their card, which is their primary source of income.

I'm still not totally sold on the GPU doing physics...I haven't yet seen a single current or upcoming implementation of this approach. It should do it quite well, but the question remains wheter or not there's going to be GPU muscle available to spare for physics?Multi-core CPUs are likely to be king-of-the-hill, if only for the fact that a CPU upgrade is a no-brainer and everybody is likely to have one, thus giving the largest possible installed-base.

[Novum]

The PhysX SDK is only free for noncommercial use.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by Morgoth the Dark Enemy

I'm still not totally sold on the GPU doing physics...I haven't yet seen a single current or upcoming implementation of this approach.

HavokFX has had production-quality stuff for years now. Although they only use it for "effect physics", there's no real reason why it couldn't be used for everything (they'd need to make it a bit more full-featured, but that wouldn't be hard). ATI/AMD has also been demoing full broad+narrow phase collision detection on the GPU for several years.

The upcoming game "Hellgate: London" will use a lot of GPU physics, both in terms of HavokFX and also real-time fluid sim (a la NVIDIA smoke demo) and more. It'll be out in the next few months IIRC.

Originally Posted by Morgoth the Dark Enemy

It should do it quite well, but the question remains wheter or not there's going to be GPU muscle available to spare for physics?

If you need more power, add another GPU (or get a faster one, or both) I've never understood this argument about "how can the GPU do physics if it's doing graphics?" since conceptually it's no different from the CPU doing bits of both, and indeed the GPU is already much *more* parallel.

Originally Posted by Morgoth the Dark Enemy

Multi-core CPUs are likely to be king-of-the-hill, if only for the fact that a CPU upgrade is a no-brainer and everybody is likely to have one, thus giving the largest possible installed-base.

This I can certainly agree with... with quad-core CPUs being <$300 (!!!) now people will certainly be buying them. That said, they're still technically less efficient than GPUs for many physics computations (both in perf/$ and perf/W), but the fact remains that the average person seems to like purchasing fairly fast CPUs and relatively slow GPUs.

That said physics isn't as taxing as graphics for instance, even with thousands of objects. Thus a dual/quad-core CPU is usually enough, and thus is the obvious target especially with a lot of x86 physics code still sitting around.

[Tim Murray]

Hypothesis:

SLI/Crossfire among heterogeneous chipsets will result in serious adoption of GPU physics, since you can then either get physics or faster graphics.

[Techzen]

Very interesting conversation. I've been following these cards since the first came out and been watching the current models fall in price. As a gamer I was temped to get one a few times but never found enough convincing arguement to make the jump to purchasing one.

For me the flaws were lack of PCI-E (soon to be a non issue). The many reports of massive heat issues even when the user was not playing a game that would be using the card or not even playing a game. The high price of the card when I could put that $ towards another Vid card or other system upgrades with more overall system gain. And major lack of games using the engine to begin with.

My interest was again sparked when I came across the following while looking for some info about Havok (http://www.havok.com/content/view/187/77/):
Does Havok FX Support AGEIA?

Havok FX supports all hardware that can execute standard OpenGL and Direct3D code at the Shader Model 3.0 level. If the AGEIA card and drivers adopt and support Shader Model 3.0 industry standard, Havok FX support will be possible.

For me this is the cards greatest chance of becoming mainstream. If they can make the hardware support other engines then it has a chance in the gamer community. Havok support would mean HL2, Fear,Bioshock and a long list of other great games could use this card.

Dell is using the cards and even added a version to some laptops from what i have heard, so I am not sure where this company is going with this. But I hope it could turn into another usefull ,affordable link in the chain to making the gaming experience a better one. One can only wait and see.

Thanks again for the great info.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by AndyTX

HavokFX has had production-quality stuff for years now. Although they only use it for "effect physics", there's no real reason why it couldn't be used for everything (they'd need to make it a bit more full-featured, but that wouldn't be hard). ATI/AMD has also been demoing full broad+narrow phase collision detection on the GPU for several years.

The upcoming game "Hellgate: London" will use a lot of GPU physics, both in terms of HavokFX and also real-time fluid sim (a la NVIDIA smoke demo) and more. It'll be out in the next few months IIRC.


If you need more power, add another GPU (or get a faster one, or both) I've never understood this argument about "how can the GPU do physics if it's doing graphics?" since conceptually it's no different from the CPU doing bits of both, and indeed the GPU is already much *more* parallel.


This I can certainly agree with... with quad-core CPUs being <$300 (!!!) now people will certainly be buying them. That said, they're still technically less efficient than GPUs for many physics computations (both in perf/$ and perf/W), but the fact remains that the average person seems to like purchasing fairly fast CPUs and relatively slow GPUs.

That said physics isn't as taxing as graphics for instance, even with thousands of objects. Thus a dual/quad-core CPU is usually enough, and thus is the obvious target especially with a lot of x86 physics code still sitting around.

I should've detailed my point WRT lack of GPU based solutions:I was talking about this being implemented in actual games instead of demos. HavokFX has been around for a while, and there aren't any available or upcoming titles using it(I may be wrong). I didn't know about Hellgate, cheers for the tip.

Good luck trying to convince John Doe (who just whined to the moon and back that his SM2.0 card can't run Bioshock) and his good friend Jack Doe (who has a 7600 or whatever and can actually run the game, but at 800x600 with stuff turned down because he's not a graphics whore) that he needs an extra GPU/a better one, in order to see accurate physics. It's pretty much the same problem as with Ageia, whilst a CPU anyone gets(as we already seem to have agreed )...and we all know that when developing a game you really care about the largest installed base so it's quite likely that physics will remain CPU based, IMHO.

[pax]

Well now that havok has been bought by intel I guess ageia potentially just got a shot in the arm. I mean will amd and nvidia wanna pay royalties to intel on havok tech?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by pax

Well now that havok has been bought by intel I guess ageia potentially just got a shot in the arm. I mean will amd and nvidia wanna pay royalties to intel on havok tech?

Havok sell to game developers, so why would AMD or Nvidia care one way or another, as neither of them make games?

[pax]

I thought both nvidia and ati were to license havok to do physics on gpu. Plus the possibility that havok would be optimized for intel cpus and gpus vs the competition.