During Nvidia's fourth-quarter financial results conference call, Nvidia shed a little more light on its acquisition of Ageia and what it plans to do with the firm's PhysX technology. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed that Nvidia's strategy is to take the PhysX engine and port it onto CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a C-like application programming interface Nvidia developed to let programmers write general-purpose applications that can run on GPUs. All of Nvidia's existing GeForce 8 graphics processors already support CUDA, and Huang confirmed that the cards will be able to run PhysX.
"We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA."
"We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA."
8800 GT 512 Golden Sample (G92) runs it at maz just fine.
love this card.
Then keep digging, Watson!
Then keep digging, Watson!
ROFLOL I never heard that one before. Awesome
If so, then thats great. Something good came out of them buying PhysX. =)
SLI.
you dont have to run physics in the games if you dont want too, or you could use a lower resolution and use physics...
be happy you will get something for free that you can try out... if not you have not lost anything.
(From http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=c...&Itemid=61)
Edge: You’ve more or less already placed your cards on the table about this, but what do you make of discrete physics cards, like Ageia’s PhysX?
Gabe Newell: I think that’s a horrible idea. At the same time that the distinction between the GPU and CPU is going away the PPU guys want to come in and define a new set of abstractions, where we have memory and data that’s really far away from the CPU and GPU... How do I tell when something breaks, or gets pushed by a monster? All these decisions I have on my CPU have to sit around until they are resolved on the PPU and GPU, and you end up with a physics decelerator. This is the reason you want a homogenous architecture.
(From http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=c...&Itemid=61)
Edge: You’ve more or less already placed your cards on the table about this, but what do you make of discrete physics cards, like Ageia’s PhysX?
Gabe Newell: I think that’s a horrible idea. At the same time that the distinction between the GPU and CPU is going away the PPU guys want to come in and define a new set of abstractions, where we have memory and data that’s really far away from the CPU and GPU... How do I tell when something breaks, or gets pushed by a monster? All these decisions I have on my CPU have to sit around until they are resolved on the PPU and GPU, and you end up with a physics decelerator. This is the reason you want a homogenous architecture.
Gabe isn't the be-all and end-all of games. Plus, this is about using the GPU to perform physics, removing the need for a separate card, so it doesn't really apply anyway.
the main thing here will be the performance/eye candy hit current cards would take when doing physics...
my 8000gts 320mb has already returned the investment but this could do a little more for free.
this feature has been out for what i think 2 years in the ageia hardware add-on but now it is coming to the GF8 cars via software from nvidia and i doubt anyone would disable it as it would free up physx being done on the CPU for the most part on games made for the Physx add-on hardware
I realise that it's getting a solution that could only be done in hardware up to now onto a software platform more people can make use of it (to which end it's good), but I feel theres not many current games that take advantage of it and for future titles the 8800's will likely struggle enough without the extra workload. For a card lineup that's 18 months old I'm unsure how useful it's ultimately going to be and the real benefits will be seen on future cards (to which end I'd love to see them incorporate it at a hardware level).
I am still waiting for the software to use the hardware mp4 encoding supposedly built into my 8 series though.
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14147
Read the second quotation.
Last edited by WICKO on 16 Feb 2008 - 18:54
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14147
Read the second quotation.
i think you missed the word "Potentially" when you read that!
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14147
Read the second quotation.
i think you missed the word "Potentially" when you read that!
What? Even if it is a possibility, it still doesn't change the fact that CUDA is *not* a second chip which will process physics. I think you missed my point
In fact, even the mention of it being a possibility (and how they said they think it will encourage people to buy a second GPU) implies that a video card can only do one or the other.
Last edited by WICKO on 17 Feb 2008 - 04:14
i wonder, when the card is doing physics, will it output anything at all? it might show really funky stuff on the screen...
reminds me of this http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_gpu_processor.html ... its basically a 8800 gtx , with no video outputs and twice as much ram... tesla + cuda + physx = ?
didnt nvidia also have something called the 'quantum effects technology' that uses the g80 to do physics?
also, in general the cuda thing should also allow the supported graphics cards to be more flexible, like the distributed computing projects should be able to use the nvidia gpus , up to now people like folding@home could only use ati's gpus
also, unlike the physx cards , the gpus are general purpose and not specialized for physics...
Last edited by carmatic on 17 Feb 2008 - 17:07
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