[edit] Nvidia acquisition
In February 2008, Nvidia bought Ageia and the PhysX engine and has begun integrating it into its CUDA framework, effectively rendering the PhysX add-in card redundant.[7] With Intel's cancellation of Havok FX, PhysX is currently the only available solution for physics hardware acceleration.[8]
In August 2008, Nvidia released drivers that allow GeForce 8 series and above video cards to implement PhysX processing.[9]
[edit] Hardware
[edit] PPU
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a processor specially designed to alleviate calculations from the CPU, specifically calculations involving physics. Soon after the release of Ageia's PPU, graphics card manufacturers announced plans to implement similar functionality via the GPU. Support for the Ageia PPU solution was dropped for Windows 7.[10]
[edit] GPU
A graphics processing unit or GPU (also occasionally called visual processing unit or VPU) is a dedicated graphics rendering device for a personal computer, workstation, or game console. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating and displaying computer graphics, and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for a range of complex algorithms such as accelerating physics using PhysX. A GPU can sit on top of a video card, or it can be integrated directly into the motherboard. More than 90%[citation needed] of new desktop and notebook computers have integrated GPUs, which are usually far less powerful than their add-in counterparts.
Any CUDA ready GeForce graphics cards, GeForce series 8 and newer with 32 cores or more with 256MB or more of Video Memory [11], can take advantage of PhysX without the need to install a dedicated PhysX card.
Since the release of the 186 ForceWare drivers it's no longer possible to use a CUDA enabled card for PhysX hardware acceleration when the main GPU is of another brand, such as AMD.[12] The decision was taken due to development expenses, quality assurance and business reasons.[10][13] This decision has caused a backlash from the community that lead to the creation of a community patch for Windows 7 circumventing the Nvidia main GPU check in their updated drivers. Currently this patch only works on GPUs and not PPUs. [14]
[edit] PhysX P1 (PPU) hardware specifications
ASUS and BFG Technologies bought licenses to manufacture AGEIA's only hardware PPU—the PhysX P1 w/ 128MB GDDR3.
Multi-core MIPS architecture-based device with integrated physics acceleration hardware and memory subsystem with "tons of cores"[15]
125 million transistors[16]
182 mm2 die size
Memory: 128 MB GDDR3 RAM on 128-bit interface
Interface: 32-bit PCI 3.0
Sphere collision tests: 530 million per second (maximum capability)
Convex collision tests: 530,000 per second (maximum capability)
Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 billion per second
Peak Power Consumption: 30 W
Fabrication Process: 130 nm
Price: Between $100–250 in the USA, £75–145 (inc VAT) in the UK
