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NVIDIA licenses PhysX technology for Sony's PlayStation 3
After being on the tip of gamers' tongues last summer, NVIDIA's PhysX technology has cooled a bit in terms of sheer popularity. That said, we've no doubt that the buzz will be back in force after this one clears the airwaves. NVIDIA has just announced that it has nailed down a tools and middleware license agreement for Sony's PlayStation 3, effectively bringing the aforesaid physics tech to what's arguably the most potent game console on the market today. As a result of the deal, a PhysX software development kit (SDK) is now available to registered PS3 developers as a free download for use on the SCEI Developer Network. What exactly this means for future PS3 games remains to be seen, but one's things for sure: it's only up from here.
NVIDIA now offering laptop drivers directly through website
NVIDIA has announced that it'll now offer laptop GPU drivers directly via its website -- long overdue, if you ask us. These drivers have traditionally been offered through the computer manufacturers since most mobile GPUs are customized to be compatible with the devices' specific hotkeys and suspend / resume functionality -- NVIDIA said it has found a way around with a new modular architecture. First on the menu are beta drivers for GeForce 8M and 9M series as well as Quadro NVS-series laptops that add CUDA and PhysX support, with Windows-certified drivers for all GeForce 7, 8 and 9 series and Quadro NVS series are due out early next year. Now, if only we could download hugs... [Via Notebook Review]
ASUS G50 / G71 laptops and ARES CG6155 gaming PC now available
It's been awhile (or a long while, in the case of the ARES CG6155) since we've heard about these machines, but ASUS has at long last decided to start shipping 'em to retailers. The aforesaid gaming desktop still doesn't have a publicly available price tag, but ASUS assures us that it's out there now for those who know where to look. Thankfully, it was a bit (and we stress "bit") more forthcoming with details on the G50 and G71 gaming notebooks, which are also available as we speak for $1,249.99 and take-your-best-guess, respectively.Read - ASUS ARES CG6155Read - ASUS G50 and G71
NVIDIA offers PhysX and CUDA support to GeForce 8 and higher
Assuming your NVIDIA GeForce graphics card isn't broken, the company has added PhysX and CUDA support to its GeForce 8, 9 and 200-series via the free Power Pack download, found on its Force Within page (via press release). The company is also offering a few Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX-enabled maps, the full Warmonger game, Folding@Home, demos of Metal Knight Zero and Nurien and various tech demos. Each game has to support PhysX before you'll notice a difference (here's a list of supported titles). Once we download the update, we'll let you know just how much more awesome our copies of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakening are. (Answer: so much more awesome.)
NVIDIA enables PhysX and CUDA support for GeForce 8 and higher GPUs with free downloads
It's not a direct response to AMD unveiling the HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 yesterday, but NVIDIA also came to play at SIGGRAPH, and it's got lots of new GPU-as-CPU toys for us this morning -- and what's more, they're free. Like we'd been hearing, GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series cards are all getting PhysX support as of today via a free GeForce Power Pack that contains a free full copy of Warmonger, three PhysX-enabled Unreal Tournament 3 maps, demos of Metal Knight Zero and the Nurien UT3-based social networking service, and a couple tech demos. The Power Pack also includes some new CUDA apps to play with, including a new Folding@Home client (ahem) and a trial version of the Badaboom video transcoder. That's a lot of new toys, so get downloading and let us know what you think!Read - PhysX GeForce Power Pack appsRead - CUDA GeForce Power Pack apps
NVIDIA uncorking PhysX support for GeForce cards on August 12th
It's arriving a month later than anticipated, but at least it's arriving (we hope). According to a first look at PhysX on NVIDIA's GeForce cards, The Tech Report is reporting (ahem) that the graphical outfit will dish out new drivers that add PhysX support on August 12th. The new software will allow owners of GeForce 8, GeForce 9 and GeForce GTX 200-series cards to use PhysX acceleration without shelling out any additional coinage, which means that you all will surely be giving it a shot just for kicks, right? Keep next Tuesday clear -- you and Unreal Tournament 3 have a date, like it or not.[Via UberReview]
PhysX on ATI effort gets helping hand from NVIDIA
Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has already made some considerable progress getting PhysX to run on AMD hardware, and it looks like he's now getting a helping hand from a somewhat unexpected source, with NVIDIA itself reportedly giving the project its blessing. Apparently, NVIDIA has even gone so far as to invite Badit to join its developer program, which gives him access to documentation, SDKs and, most importantly, direct access to hardware and NVIDIA engineers, a move that Badit describes as "impressive, inspiring and motivating." Badit is decidedly less impressed by AMD, however, which has apparently been unwilling to provide with any hardware or support for the project. That stubborn stance, he surmises, can only be due to AMD's backing of Intel's Havok physics engine, which NVIDIA would no doubt like to have out of the picture (hence its willingness to help here).[Via TG Daily]
PhysX layer running on AMD Radeon 3870, utility available "soon"
As if overnight, Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has PhysX running on the AMD Radeon 3870. Badit said that the hack was "easy," and NGOHQ.com will distribute the utility after a bit more testing. As for performance, he hit a 22,606 CPU score in 3D mark Vantage, which is nothing to sneeze at. He swears that AMD isn't involved in any of this, and that the utility release will be entirely independent.[Via TGDaily]
NVIDIA pushing out GeForce PhysX support in July
We knew driver-enabled PhysX support was due for NVIDIA's line some time soon, but HotHardware's reporting that GeForce 8 and 9-series owners will finally have it when ForceWare 177.39 ships alongside the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in July. The preliminary benchmarks seem to show some serious GPU performance gains for PhysX operations, so with any luck you'll soon be rendering Independence Day fireworks at greater framerates than ever previously imagined.[Via Slashdot]
GeForce 8 GPUs to acquire PhysX support via software download
Good news for folks with a GeForce 8 GPU and lots of questions about how the recent Ageia acquisition would affect them: your current card will be receiving PhysX support. When NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was questioned in a recent conference call, he noted that the firm was currently "working towards the physics-engine-to-CUDA port," and it could be delivered as "a software update" to every card that's CUDA-enabled (read: all of the GeForce 8 GPUs). Sadly, the bigwig still wouldn't say when to expect the release of the first PhysX port, but we really can't imagine it taking too awfully long now.
NVIDIA / Ageia deal gets officially official
Well that was fast -- just nine days after announcing plans to acquire PhysX maker Ageia, NVIDIA said today that the deal is done. Still no word on when we might see NVIDIA cards with Ageia tech in them, but we'll let these two enjoy their first Valentine's day as a happy couple merged corporate entity before we start asking the hard questions.[Thanks, Ryan]
Nvidia to acquire Ageia Technologies
Graphics whiz buys physics boffin news now, with the announcement of graphics card designer Nvidia's "definitive agreement" to purchase Ageia, developer of the PhysX middleware and corresponding PPU (physics processing unit) hardware accelerators. Ageia's PhysX solution is reportedly in use by over 140 shipping or in-development games across a range of platforms, including the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and PC. The purchase reflects both companies' shared goal of "creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "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."The press release makes no mention of the acquisition cost nor specific products those millions of gamers around the world can expect in the future, but the first benefits of the agreement are sure to be seen in precariously stacked, stunningly rendered crates.[Via Engadget]
NVIDIA to acquire Ageia
After months of rumors and speculation, NVIDIA announced today that it's acquiring Ageia and its PhysX tech. There's no word on how much coin NVIDIA is dropping on the deal, but the company says the move makes sense, given the similarities in GPU and PPU designs and the trend towards massively parallel coprocessing units like NVIDIA's CUDA cards. Of course, given the war of words between game devs and hardware manufacturers over the value of PPU units, it'll be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this deal -- come on, John Carmack, we know you've got a statement ready.[Via FPS Labs; Thanks, Chuck]
AGEIA to give UT3 modders a physical with PhysX mod kit
With consoles constantly encroaching on what used to be exclusively PC territory, it's refreshing to know that there are some things, such as mods, that remain the domain of those who prefer keyboard and mouse over thumbsticks. For example, while Epic's Unreal Tournament III will eventually find its way to gamers of both persuasions, it will be PC enthusiasts who enjoy the added benefit of mods, though word is that players will somehow be able to share mods between platforms. The latest mod tools for the game come from physics moguls AGEIA, who have announced plans to release a mod kit designed around the company's PhysX GPU processor, promising modders "everything they need to easily add PhysX-powered content into the UT3 universe." The kit, which will be available in December, will include additional tools, guides, tutorials and documentation and assets and examples on top of the game's existing mod tools.In addition, to show that it's serious AGEIA has also released a collection of "Extreme PhysX Mod Levels," which are now available and aim to demonstrate why we should all care about the PhysX processor. This collection includes the LightHouse and Tornado mod levels, the latter of which can be seen in video form here. More levels are promised, and while we can't say that this has driven us to brave the Black Friday crowds to lay down the geld for one of those cards, AGEIA no doubt hopes that players include PhysX cards on their shopping lists this holiday season.
AMD tosses around the idea of acquiring Ageia
While it's apparently still quite a ways beyond the realm of possibility, Custom PC is reporting that AMD has at least tossed around the idea of acquiring Ageia, which makes the PhysX physics processing unit and corresponding PhysX software. That doesn't seem to be an entirely new development, however, with AMD's Richard Huddy saying, 'we've had that discussion, yes. It's a discussion that goes round every three months – someone turns to me and says 'why don't we buy Ageia?' and I go through the arguments about why we should and why we shouldn't.' The biggest stumbling block, not surprisingly, is price, with Intel's recent acquisition of Havok weighing heavily into the equation. That, Huddy says, gave Ageia a roughly equivalent value of $100 million, a value Huddy says is about $90 million too much. He still doesn't rule out an acquisition altogether, however, although it seems that there'll have to be a pretty big shift in valuations before AMD's interest is really piqued.
Ageia's mobile PhysX PPU headed for Dell's laptop line
John Carmack may not believe in dedicated PPUs, but it seems that Dell certainly does, as IGN recently reported that the company is set to add Ageia's new mobile PhysX PPU to its laptop line, a move that now appears to be all but confirmed by the above image residing on Ageia's press site. The mobile PhysX PPU itself was announced just ahead of the recent Leipzig Games Convention, and promises to offer many of the same benefits as its desktop counterpart while keeping power consumption to a minimum (10W during gameplay, according to Ageia). While there still doesn't seem to be any official word from Dell, as IGN points out, the company's top-end XPS M1710 (or forthcoming M1730) would seem to be the most likely to get the new upgrade.[Thanks, Mack S]
John Carmack doesn't believe in PPUs? Fine, then PPUs don't believe in John Carmack
We wouldn't go so as far to say that developers in the dedicated PPU world are "firing back" over John Carmack's statement last week that he is "not a believer in dedicated PPUs," but we would at least say that they're offering alternative opinions. In a recent Bit-tech article, Ageia's Dan Forster tackles concerns over the need for PPUs, and (in)directly addresses Carmack's statement that "multiple CPU cores will be much more useful in general," by suggesting that no matter how many cores are involved, there are timing issues between them when being distributed to separate tasks. Forster claims "At the moment, there's not a single game that supports multi-threading even at a basic level..." Leaving some of us to wonder just what Carmack is on about -- but do you really want to question the man who created Doom? Didn't think so.
John Carmack doesn't believe in dedicated PPUs
John Carmack has always been vocally opposed to the concept of dedicated Physics processors for gaming PCs, but his latest statement on the topic really hammers the nail in. Talking to Boot Daily on the topic of Intel's QX6850 CPU, Carmack states that future multiple core CPUs will be able to take the strain of physics processing. Carmack does have a fair degree of interest in this area, with Ageia's PhysX card being supported on the Unreal Engine 3 platform, which happens to be developed by iD software's rival, Epic Games. If there's one thing we can be sure to garner out of this statement, it's that iD software's new gaming platform iD Tech 5 won't be one that favors dedicated physics processors.[Via Digg]
Ageia building PCI Express version of PhysX card
Nothing much to see here, but Ageia is apparently prepping a PCI Express version of their PhysX card -- which is currently only available in PCI form. The new card boasts of zero performance improvements, since the original isn't even close to maxing out a PCI bus, but doesn't PCI Express just sound more exciting? We suppose if you've got all your PCI slots full-up with a sound card, Killer NIC and some AI Processing, a free PCI-E x1 slot might be your only option, but otherwise we can't imagine a huge demand for this card when this starts shipping sometime October-ish. Ageia also launched a new version of the PhysX SDK today, with Vista 64-bit and Linux support, along with a new "Realitymark" benchmark system to convince the unwashed masses that buying a PCI E dedicated physics card with near zero game support is a decent value proposition.
Microsoft reveals multi-platform Robotics Studio
It seems that Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Academy isn't the only organization working on multi-platform robotics software these days, as Microsoft has just revealed its own so-called Robotics Studio, which is intended to be a rich, scalable programming environment that can control anything from the simplest Lego Mindstorms creation to a highly-complex, car-assembling industrial bot. Unveiled at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exhibition in Pittsburgh, PA, the new software development kit will let users employ a visual programming tool for building command sets or debugging their applications, and also utilizes technology from PhysX manufacturer Aegia to enable realistic 3D simulations for determining how programs will execute in the real world. Not only does the platform support interaction with properly-formatted third-party languages, it will also allow outside developers to build their own commercial applications in the same way that software manufacturers create programs to run on Windows or Windows Mobile today. You can download a preview of the new toolkit-- which also enables web-based bot control -- by following the Read link, or if you just want to know a little more about its history and capabilities, Channel 9 has a great video featuring demos and interviews with the development team.[Via Information Week]
