GPU physics dead, says AMD

Posted at: 2:44am 21st November 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

Communications between Havok and ATI disappeared as soon as Intel bought Havok

As soon as Half-Life 2 wowed us with its Gravity Gun and see-saw puzzles, the PC gaming business was in the grip of a box-toppling physics frenzy. First, US company Ageia announced that it had a physics chip, called PhysX, and then Nvidia and ATI announced that they could accelerate physics on a GPU through the Havok FX API. It all looked good until Intel spoilt their fun by buying Havok, which AMD claims has knocked GPU physics on the head.

AMD’s head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, told Custom PC that Havok was previously ‘very helpful in getting the GPU acceleration for Havok FX out there.’ He added that ‘it’s been a part of their marketing message for the first half of 2006, certainly running up until the end of 2006, and they were really helpful about it, but their helpfulness has largely vanished now that they’ve been bought by Intel.’

Huddy elaborated, saying that ‘from Intel’s point of view, there is no reason why they would want to have that physics supported on the GPU any further, so all those conversations have ground to a halt.’ It looks as though Intel wants Havok’s physics expertise to apply purely to CPUs from now on, but Huddy thinks the company may have more in mind than just physics in PC games. ‘Intel want to have a physics solution that they can offer to complete their platform story,’ said Huddy, adding that this would be ‘as a vendor both on the PC and on future consoles, I suspect.’

Of course, Nvidia and ATI could talk to the other big player in physics, Ageia, about accelerating the PhysX API on GPUs, but Huddy claims that this isn’t really an option. ‘We talked to Ageia,’ admits Huddy, ‘and asked them whether they would like our GPU acceleration in the software case, but it would be somewhat embarrassing for them if we run it much faster, and certainly for the eye candy physics we do.’

Huddy pointed out that there are two main categories of physics in games – eye candy and interactive physics that actually change the way in which the game is played. The latter ‘tends to be better done on the CPU, or Ageia would argue the PPU,’ says Huddy, ‘but the rest can all be turfed off onto the GPU.’ Unsurprisingly, Huddy said that ‘Ageia aren’t really enthusiastic about that, because it does show just how much faster we are then them, and it undermines their message, so I see us having quite major problems in that kind of market dynamic.’

So does that mean that all the ideas about having two graphics cards for graphics, and one for physics, have now been abandoned? ‘It’s not shelved,’ says Huddy, ‘we’d love to do it, but our difficulty is playing in a market where most of the other players really don’t want us to do this, and it becomes a pretty significant engineering effort from us if we want to get it out there.’