Physics Processing Unit?

[XavierS]

Personally I see a lot of ties between this company and Microsoft on their website.

1. On their "About AGEIA" page the partner quote is from Big Huge Games, who uses Microsoft as a publisher.

2. The PPU is said to work in Unreal Engine 3 by Epic, which I think is lead by an ex-microsoft employee. And it seems Epic does most of their work on the PC or Xbox.

3. On their publisher and developer page the only other name I recognize than Big Huge Games and Epic is Artificial Studios which was rumored to be working on a game engine for the Xenon and PC.

4. AGEIA was listed on that XNA studios press release as one of the major middleware providers.

5. And one of the seven people on the board of directors is none other than Ed Fries, former head of Microsoft Game Studios.

6. And finally I wish I could find it again but I could have sworn yesterday there was a quote on their website from Pseudo Interactive. They did the Cell Damage game on xbox and more recently the car crash game for the XNA unveiling.

Major Nelson from Xbox.com said some of the stuff we were going to see at the Microsoft Keynote speech tomorrow would be amazing. I hope this is part of that.

 

[Megadrive1988]

it's funny, when i see 'PPU' I think of the Nintendo Entertainment System's / Famicom's graphics chip, the PPU, the Picture Processing Unit.

 

[Ty]

see what you can get out of him

Heh, I just might!

 

[j^aws]

Personally I see a lot of ties between this company and Microsoft on their website.

1. On their "About AGEIA" page the partner quote is from Big Huge Games, who uses Microsoft as a publisher.

2. The PPU is said to work in Unreal Engine 3 by Epic, which I think is lead by an ex-microsoft employee. And it seems Epic does most of their work on the PC or Xbox.

3. On their publisher and developer page the only other name I recognize than Big Huge Games and Epic is Artificial Studios which was rumored to be working on a game engine for the Xenon and PC.

4. AGEIA was listed on that XNA studios press release as one of the major middleware providers.

5. And one of the seven people on the board of directors is none other than Ed Fries, former head of Microsoft Game Studios.

6. And finally I wish I could find it again but I could have sworn yesterday there was a quote on their website from Pseudo Interactive. They did the Cell Damage game on xbox and more recently the car crash game for the XNA unveiling.

Major Nelson from Xbox.com said some of the stuff we were going to see at the Microsoft Keynote speech tomorrow would be amazing. I hope this is part of that.

I would like to see a PPU in Xenon. Though what seems to put me off that idea is that the R500 GPU is very flexible and can handle non-graphics tasks, the CPU with 3 cores is very flexible and both can be general purpose/ flexible processors. But this PPU is a fixed function unit ONLY dealing with physics in the midst of this flexible/ general purpose architecture which seems to go against the whole ethos of the design of Xenon. :? ...It maybe a quick/ cheap easy gain though, giving it a nice boost against the competition...

 

[version]

possibly, a 16x16 polygon matrix collision detect circuit?
256 collision/cycle at 500 MHZ =128 Gigacollision/sec
how much flops is it? about 4 teraflops?

 

[Qroach]

version what are you talking about? where are you getting these numbers from?

 

[Carl B]

Yeah for real - what is that? We need reference!

 

[j^aws]

possibly, a 16x16 polygon matrix collision detect circuit?
256 collision/cycle at 500 MHZ =128 Gigacollision/sec
how much flops is it? about 4 teraflops?

Errr...where are you pulling these numbers from?

 

[Farid]

People seriously expect a 125M transistor discrete IC, for an extremely evolutive and flexible thing as physic maths, could find its way into the Xbox 2? The same console that is rumored to have 3 powerful cores, and an impressively flexible GPU?

Also, when you read that this piece of hardware use, only, the Novodex engine as its API, and when you read at the same time that an handful number of Xbox 2 launch games will use the Havok 3.0 engine, I say something's wrong with this hypothesis.

Ageia is a XNA partner and supportive of the XNA initiative. Who knew that before yesterday? Yet obviously MS has known about Ageia long enough to think they were important enough to list among other middleware providers like Havok, Softimage, 3DS, Alias, and the like. Obviously MS knew something none of us did.

Actually, Ageia was listed because of the Novodex physic engine, which was recently, for instance, choosed by Epic as their new physic engine to replace the now discontinued karma engine.

edit: typos

 

[Acert93]

People seriously expect a 125M transistor discrete IC, for an extremely evolutive and flexible thing as physic maths, could find its way into the Xbox 2? The same console that is rumored to have 3 powerful core, and an impressively flexible GPU?

Also, when you read that this piece of hardware use, only, the Novodex engine as its API, and when you read at the same time that an handful of Xbox 2 launch games will use the Havok 3.0 engine, I say something's wrong with this hypothesis.

Good points.

Ageia is a XNA partner and supportive of the XNA initiative. Who knew that before yesterday? Yet obviously MS has known about Ageia long enough to think they were important enough to list among other middleware providers like Havok, Softimage, 3DS, Alias, and the like. Obviously MS knew something none of us did.

Actually, Ageia was listed because of the Novodex physic engine, which was recently, for instance, choosed by Epic as their new physic engine to replace the now discontinued karma engine.

[/quote]

I am not disagreeing, look above. I am not saying it will be, or wont be, in the X2. My point was that these statements that MS would have to reorganize their board and all that other stuff is silly. MS is very well aware of Ageia and what they are working on. I had not heard of them until the other day, but obviously they are well known enough to be included among other reputable middleware providers and be used by Epic. So the argument that this was too late for X2 is not valid. That was my point.

With 2-4 PPC chips with vector units I am not sure the X2 will need a chip like this. And we are still not sure if ATi included Fast14 (or Fastmath) into the GPU. A PPU may be totally redundant on the X2.

 

[j^aws]

Can someone clarify this PPU API please...I was under the impression that it was a compatible XNA API and not exclusive to Novadex?

If it's proprietry to Novadex, then it's not getting very far unless it's a standard API, IMO...

EDIT: Changed Havok to Novadex...it seems I have Half-life 2 on my mind!

 

[pc999]

This tech in XB2 would be great, the size of the chip wouldnt be the problem (for exemple read the Dave B. coments http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21038&start=60 ) they can cut the wast of transistors (720p) in a lot of ways.

Power 25W in 100s dont seems a problem too.

But 125MG GDDR3 it is a major one, could edram been used

 

[Farid]

My point was that these statements that MS would have to reorganize their board and all that other stuff is silly. MS is very well aware of Ageia and what they are working on. I had not heard of them until the other day, but obviously they are well known enough to be included among other reputable middleware providers and be used by Epic. So the argument that this was too late for X2 is not valid. That was my point.

I wasn't arguing your point, Acert, since I agree with you, no, I just pointed you out that Ageia had a reason to be on the list other than this PPU. This reason being the Novodex engine.

With 2-4 PPC chips with vector units I am not sure the X2 will need a chip like this. And we are still not sure if ATi included Fast14 (or Fastmath) into the GPU. A PPU may be totally redundant on the X2.

I completely agree with this. A PPU, in the Xbox 2, will be not only redundant, it will also be a waste of transistors in a majority of games, if they don't need any extensive physic operations.

Also, I don't see the real advantages a fixed function physic IC, in a console, could provide at this point in time. It's clearly too early.

 

[pc999]

With 2-4 PPC chips with vector units I am not sure the X2 will need a chip like this. And we are still not sure if ATi included Fast14 (or Fastmath) into the GPU. A PPU may be totally redundant on the X2.

Also some devs, like DeanoC, had said that those PPU would be caled GPUs and if they can write on memory they got a great deal.

BTW what kind of number can a Fastmath do

 

[Farid]

BTW what kind of number can a Fastmath do

I don't really understand what you mean, but Intrinsity's Fast14 is a technology based on dynamic logic design, and its supposed to give you higher clocked parts and/or better yields.

 

[pc999]

I am asking about their Fastmath processor,I suposse that it is that Acert is talking about, here

if ATi included Fast14 (or Fastmath)

, instead of a PPU.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Here's what version said at:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=466676#466676

********************************************************
XENON:

- 2 core G5 at 3 GHZ with 2 MB cache
- 8 vectorprocessor in another chip at 3GHZ
- ati gpu with 32 unified shader, 500 MHZ

*********************************************************

And this diagram of "x2" at:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=446388#446388

*********************************************************

M$ use 3 processor in x2


CPU --- PhysicsUnit
|
GPU

*********************************************************

heh that would be 'totally awesome'


then I would give each processor (CPU, PPU, GPU) it's own
seperate 256 MB memory. 768 MB total.
not counting caches and embedded on-chip GPU-memory, of course.


wait.... hangon. ultimate fantasy XENON configuration:

* 4-core modified G6 (POWER5 based) @ 3 GHZ with 4 MB cache. 2 threads per core, 8 threads in all.

* 8 Vector Processors in another chip @ 3 GHZ
(acts as PPU, Geometry Engine, Vertex Shader)

* ATi VPU with best technology that SGI-ARTX-REAL3D within ATi could come up with combined with the best that M$'s Cagent/M2-MX teams can offer. 48 Unified Shader Pipelines (96 ALUs, 192 ops per clock!) but optimised toward pixel shading since that other new Processor can handle VS. 750 MHZ thanks to Fast-14 tech. 48 MB embedded memory

(VPU has to have more eDRAM than the now-old Sony GS I-32!)

768 MB of memory split equally (256 MB each) between the 3 dies


^more reasonable than the talk 2+ years ago of Playstation3 with 4000+ thread units within hundreds of sub-processors within several Cell-Chip dies giving several Teraflops performance with 1 or several GigaBytes of memory.

 

[Fafalada]

then I would give each processor (CPU, PPU, GPU) it's own seperate 256 MB memory. 768 MB total.

Call it Chihiro 360 while you're at it, and sell the board for 4000$

 

[Megadrive1988]

then I would give each processor (CPU, PPU, GPU) it's own seperate 256 MB memory. 768 MB total.

Call it Chihiro 360 while you're at it, and sell the board for 4000$

naw, I'd just sell it as Microsoft's 'NeoGeo' or 'AMIGA' for $600.

the higher end configuration, the one with all the media / convergence and computing goodies, would be sold for $999.99 as Microsoft's new computer

^__^

 

[LeGreg]

What does this thread do in Console talk ?

It's obviously off topic.