Ageia Technologieson Wednesday announced the availability of its PhysX processor — a dedicated “ physics processing unit of measurement ” ( PPU ) designed to work in continuative with game that use Ageia ’s purgative locomotive engine . The company expects add in boards to start hitting retail store shelves in May , 2006 .
ironware - ground physical science processing represents a newfangled trend in gaming . With hardware - based physics acceleration , games can feature dramatically more realistic real - time physics effects , including dope , particle effects , dynamic physical apparent movement and interaction far beyond what today ’s game are subject of doing .
Up until now , such effect have set their warhead squarely on the shoulders of the CPU , or sometimes , using graphical trickery , the 3D graphics chip . Recent advancements from Ageia and rival Havok aim to change that .
Ageia has been publically promoting its PhysX technology for the past class . Ageia ’s approach is to license a physics locomotive engine to secret plan producer that ’s scalable to both software system and hardware , and to produce a PPU that can then quicken physics result . Game developer license the PhysX SDK from Ageia and incorporate that into their games as a way of driving physics - based effects .
This is the second major announcement concerning computer hardware - speed physical science to emerge from this week ’s Game Developers Conference ( GDC ) in San Jose , Calif. Earlier this workweek , graphics bit Creator Nvidia declare a partnership with Havok to wreak hardware speedup to Havok FX software using Nvidia ’s own art chips .
Nvidia said that Havok FX is specially well - suit to work on PCs equipped with more than one Nvidia - found card , linked using Scalable Link Interface ( SLI ) — a engineering that has n’t yet made its debut on the Macintosh . In fact , Havok ’s physics engine has n’t been used on any Mac games at this period , either .
Ageia ’s approach path is unlike — it ’s depending on third party manufacturers include board manufacturer Asus and BFG to produce cards that sport the PhysX PPU on card . It ’s unknown at this time whether those plug-in will work in the Mac , but Ageia has positioned PhysX as a crabby - platform technology . The company even has alliance with Mac - favorable developers like MacSoft parent Destineer Studios and Aspyr Media .
Ageia take that more than 100 games plump for the PhysX CPU are in ontogenesis from company including Ubisoft , Epic Games and others .
