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Nvidia to buy Ageia
Promises GeForce-accelerated PhysX, but the company may well share its technology by making a free, non-proprietary physics API too
Now that Nvidia's previous physics pal Havok has been bought by Intel, the graphics giant has decided to buy the other major physics company; Ageia. In a statement, the graphics company said it had 'signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ageia Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology.'
Nvidia's president, Jen-Hsun Huang, said that 'the Ageia team is world class, and is passionate about the same thing we are-creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences. By combining the teams that created the world's most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world.'
Meanwhile, Ageia's CEO and co-founder, Manju Hedge, said that 'Nvidia is the perfect fit for us. They have the world's best parallel computing technology and are the thought leaders in GPUs and gaming. We are united by a common culture based on a passion for innovating and driving the consumer experience.'
Talks between Havok and Nvidia and AMD apparently broke down after the company was bought by Intel, with AMD's head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, saying that 'their helpfulness has largely vanished now that they've been bought by Intel.' Nvidia's vice president of content relations, Roy Taylor concurred when we spoke to him in December last year, saying 'I agree with Richard that, although I don't want to say anything negative about Intel - we're very cosy with them - he's right in as much as we need a non-proprietary, free API. We do - we need one.'
What's interesting, though, is that Taylor was talking a lot about the principle of having a non-proprietary, free API, as opposed to an exclusive Nvidia physics API. Let's face it; this is what you'd need if you wanted game developers to take your API seriously over Intel's. 'The industry is crying out for a non-proprietary physics API, and there isn't one today,' Taylor told Custom PC, 'Havok is no longer non-proprietary.'
So how could Nvidia go about this? 'Well, the perfect thing would be DirectPhysics,' says Taylor, 'If that was out right now, it would be fantastic. When I meet developers, that's what they all want. They want a non-proprietary, free API to write physics.'
The idea is that the API could be accelerated by either a CPU or a GPU, and Taylor says that this decision 'should be settled by the developers.' However, he did say that 'we think the GPU stands by itself as the best piece of hardware to accelerate physics, and we think that should be selectable, but each individual developer should decide which way they want to go. We want the world to have it, developers want to start doing it for sure - we've just got to work out the right way forward.'
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While nVidia might make a free API so ATi can use it as well, I'd bet they make a few little adjustments so it performs better on nVidia.
Comment by TWeaK9 at 4:39am 8th February 2008
if its not gonna be a free physics API, then i doubt therell be a single dev out there who'll take physics seriously, hence a loss for the entire AGEIA and HAVOK buyout gigs. if that happens, like hell AMD would get damaged long-term.. AMD could either NOT benefit or actually gain if nVidia does go give the API to the public.
Comment by thegreat0mi at 4:20am 8th February 2008
If you read and understand, the basic idea and principle was to move that one step further to a technology that a cpu/gpu and ppu are combined together as one chip- The move was also part of a marketing ploy, as now the newer nvidia chips can sport Nvidia With Ageia Physix on there newer generation cards :)
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 1:48pm 6th February 2008
"A non-propriatory, free API" was mentioned in the article so many times in relation to Nvidia's intentions that it was starting to get boring. If anything it'll provide a leg-up for AMD CPU's, given that Intel's ownership of Havok can only really lead to a physics performance benefit for Intel CPU's. Quite what it would do to their GPU's is anyone's guess, but that's AMD's problem - they should never have bought ATI in the first place. As far as the PhysX card is concerned, of course it slows machines down - it tends to unlock extra details in games like GRAW which the GPU has to render, lowering framerates as a result. Games written for the PPU like Warmonger and Cell factor are slideshows without the PPU, even on a quad-core CPU.
Comment by gavomatic57 at 7:14am 6th February 2008
Nvidia buying out ageia would just be a waste of money if it aint compatable with ATI cards because the game devs will only use something if everyone has a computer capable of running it(ageia physx in this case). well if you look at how it happend before agiea physx just started out with only 1 game developer taking advantage of it (ubisoft with GRAW and SCDA) but it still didnt really get that far after all if you look through a few forums you'll find out that 99.9% of computers ran slower with the card installed. so just remember if we'll ever see these physx taking off that would mean ATI have to be able to use them too and also now Nvidia own them maybe we shall see better performance... its about time too
Comment by smiler_16 at 10:22pm 5th February 2008
this BAD for ATI/AMD they have no contact with havok since intel bought havok. I fear the same thing will happen with Ageia. Intel/havok,ati/amd,Nvidia/Ageia graphics cards umm what the hell are we going to get in 3 years out of this i dont think ati will last much longer unless they get some physics devlopers on there side. :/ its better if Ageia is shared between ati and nvidia. some of the stuff Ageia have come up with over the last year has blown my head off like the cloth no 9 demo omg well cool.
Comment by megapig at 9:10pm 5th February 2008
defo agree with MIPhantom, this could be so good for developers, lets just hope nvidia do release a free api otherwise it could be the last nail in the coffin for amd
Comment by MDK_UK at 2:21pm 5th February 2008
Looks like a good step towards physics being implemented by more by devlopers.
Comment by MIPhantom at 1:38pm 5th February 2008
Hopefully some sort of graphics/physics processing unit will come out of this?
Comment by mrjimmyos at 12:24pm 5th February 2008
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