Santa Clara (CA) – Nvidia told analysts that that the conversion of Ageia’s physics application interface to CUDA is almost complete. To demonstrate the technology’s horsepower, Nvidia ran a particle demo similar to what have been showcased by Intel on Nehalem – at more than 10 times the speed.

We can’t really recall how long and how often true physics capability has been promised by various parties over the past three, four years. But there are more signs that stunning physics visualization in fact is becoming a reality and it appears that Nvidia is taking the lead for now. With Ageia on board, the company has a key technology and   Manju Hegde, co-founder and former CEO of Ageia, confirmed that the port of Ageia’s technology to Nvidia’s CUDA is almost done.

We were not really surprised to hear that it took just a month to convert PhysX from a stand-alone API to CUDA. After all, PhysX is a well-known multi-platform physics engine, as it is used in more than 140 games in development and number of registered developers tops out 25.000 figures. CUDA is supported by the GeForce 8 series and up (in all seriousness, don't go below 8800 if you want to play with CUDA), Ageia is now looking into expanding its user base from 150.000 to more than eight million, we heard.

In order to demonstrate the physics horsepower of the GeForce 8800/9800 series, Hegde took aim at Intel's eight-core Nehalem particle demo, which can be seen in one of our IDF articles. Back in Shanghai for IDF Spring 2008, our own Humphrey Cheung filmed Intel's demo and a statement from Intel's engineer, who talked about the fact that CPUs could soon be strong enough so that you wouldn’t need a GPU in the future. While Intel told us later on that the engineer’s remarks did not reflect the company’s opinion, the statement made waves at Nvidia and prompted the company to create a physics demo with 65,000 simulated particles.

While Intel's Nehalem demo had 50,000-60,000 particles and ran at 15-20 fps (without a GPU), the particle demo on a GeForce 9800 card resulted in 300 fps. If the very likely event that Nvidia’s next-gen parts (G100:  GT100/200) will double their shader units, this number could top 600 fps, meaning that Nehalem at 2.53 GHz is lagging 20-40x behind 2006/2007/2008 high-end GPU hardware. However, you can’t ignore the fact that Nehalem in fact can run physics.

There was also a demonstration of cloth: A quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme processor was working in 12 fps, while a GeForce 8800 GTS board resulted came in at 200 fps. Former Ageia employees did not compare it to Ageia's own PhysX card, but if we remember correctly, that demo ran at 150-180 fps on an Ageia card.

Hegde stressed that the PhysX engine does not include quantum mechanics because the company "focuses on physics for fun and entertainment". The executive believes that in-game physics will be the “second biggest thing” in 2008, only trumped by video processing and transcoding from one video format to another (Blu-ray or a DVD to iPod).

Integration - A good way

Apr 14, 2008 04:23     

If Nvidia supply this on normal games high end video cards, they have a huge empty market. Whats ATI going to do?
skythra report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

@skythra

Apr 14, 2008 06:39     

lol, ATI is going to go bankrupt! strike that, ATI isnt going to go bankrupt, AMD is going to go bankrupt and will probably sell ATI to either Intel or Via for pennies on the dollar for what they bought the company for. Either way ATI isnt going to be doing much until AMD recovers or bites the dust.
Caeden report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

Too bad their is no video

Apr 14, 2008 08:02     

Would be nice to see a video of Nvidia's demo to compare it to Intel's demo.
TomT report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

First of all...

Apr 14, 2008 10:20     

AMD's acquisition of ATI has to do with incorporating a GPU into the CPU, not to compete with the high end market that Nvidia is dominating. Secondly, do this mean my PhysX card really IS useless now?
Oblivion report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Hopefully it leverages SLI

Apr 14, 2008 11:34     

My hopes are that the graphics cards can offload physics onto the second, third, or fourth GPU so that we get more money's worth for SLI.
wmcgritt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Hate to break it to you Oblivion...

Apr 14, 2008 13:49     

but that physX card has been useless for awhile. i really cant see what you were using it for at all, to be quite honest.
Kyle report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

re: Hate to break it to you Oblivion

Apr 14, 2008 15:48     

I'm in the same boat. I bought one and was anxiously waiting for UT3 to come out so I could finally put it to use. What a waste that was. The PhysX specific levels were god awful and unplayable. I hope Nvidia can implement CUDA into games and give us more than just some extra eye candy.
Jason report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Opening that can whoop!

Apr 14, 2008 19:55     

PhysX running in CUDA on GPU is the answer to great physical interaction we have all needed in game since game console went 3D. I have no doubt that ounce they finish an optimize the code EPIC games will patch UT3 with it and we'll see significant performance increases for those running SLI 8800s.
wpj report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

nVidia cards are cheaper than $100

Apr 14, 2008 20:10     

I just bought an 8800GTS 320mb for $108.46, shipping included. New 8800GS and 9600GT cards are available at newegg.com for $100-130 (after mail-in rebates). There is no need for a PhysX card with these so cheap.
Miles report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

actually the nehalem demo wasn't an 8-core. It was only 4 cores

Apr 15, 2008 01:00     

SMTed
loujob report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

I want a SLI-less option!

Apr 15, 2008 03:12     

There is a problem for those that don't have SLI boards, and that's a lot of people. Will they make it possible to process both CUDA and graphics on same board while playing game? Or will they make a PCI Express x1 boards just for Physx? I mean, I don't care if it's nVidia chip, or Physx, is it GeForce or nForce or C2D or Athlon or whatever. Just make it either part of current boards/chips (graphics card or MBO) or make it as an

LuxZg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

I want a SLI-less option (part2)

Apr 15, 2008 12:50     

got cut off :P :) ..or make it as an add-in card for PCI slot or PCIE x1 which most boards have now. Forcing people to buy SLI MBO 2x series 8 or 9 graphics card is a bit insane, and goes against the goal of spreading the physics to wide public
LuxZg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

@LuxZg

Apr 16, 2008 15:29     

Its a good thing having PhysX on GPU. I don't want to buy another card only for Physics! With SLI I get more graphics performance PhysX! To your question, YES you will be able to RUN PhysX Graphics on 1 GPU. But most likely with a performance hit.
wpj report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

@wpj

Apr 17, 2008 02:00     

I don't care about performance hit, I know it will occur, but if that wasn't an option I'd probably never use it. As for SLI, you can have SLI, but you will also have performance hit vs using 2 graphics cards for graphics only, and without Physx. So it's same thing as one card processing both physics and graphics. Btw, was that officialy said anywhere (running both Physx and graphics on same GPU?)

LuxZg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0