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Geek Culture / NVIDIA to buy Ageia

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BatVink
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Posted: 5th Feb 2008 10:17 Edited at: 5th Feb 2008 10:19
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From The Register:
Quote: "Graphics chip giant Nvidia is to purchase the last major independent physics house, Ageia.

The price and many details of the acquisition aren't being disclosed, but Nvidia said more information will come during the company's quarterly earnings call on February 13.

While separate physics cards like those made by Ageia have been introduced to overwhelming apathy, the company does good business selling its PhysX middleware to game developers.

But who knows, with Nvidia now behind Ageia we could be hearing a lot more about physics cards in the near future.

Nvidia's CEO Jenl-Hsun Huang said the acquisition will "bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world", in the release.

It also puts Nvidia in direct competition with Intel, which purchased physics software Havok last year. Now with the major physics middleware developers eaten up, where does that leave AMD?"


I think this has to be a good thing for Dark Physics. PhysX will become mainstream rather than third place behind an ATI and NVIDIA on-board competitor.
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Zappo
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Posted: 5th Feb 2008 13:18
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I agree. PhysX is apparently being used in more than 140 PhysX-based games currently available or in development for the PS3, 360, Wii and PC. Its also been reported that AGEIA has over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK. Not sure if that includes people who have bought DarkPhysics but considering PhysX hasn't really been out that long I think that's pretty impressive.


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bond1
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Posted: 5th Feb 2008 15:50
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This has got to be good news for PhysX. From what I've heard, it's been one nail in the coffin after another for Ageia, so maybe this will give them new life. I remember Valve said something along the lines of, "We had complex physics routines all the way back in 2004 with HL2, what do we need PhysX for?"

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"Your mom goes to college."
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WarGoat
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Posted: 5th Feb 2008 23:10
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Well, this is nice, but what if we have already bought a new card - a DX 10 one? Will it do like the announcement of DX 10.1? I mean, will everyone think that the new DX 10 cards will become obsolete? Maybe it'll do that for good, that would not be fun... I hope they'll find a way to incorporate PhysX in some of the DX 10 cards that are already out.

Windows Vista, Q6600 2.4ghz, 2gb Ram 800mhz - low latency, 8800 GTS 512 mb
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BatVink
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 00:21
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Your hardware will always be obsolete within a few weeks of buying it. Physics on the same card as the GPU won't be the biggest leap forward ever made in computing.

I remember when my state-of-the-art 486 DX2 66 with Maths co-processor was made defunct by the Pentium
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Benjamin
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 00:28
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Quote: "I remember when my state-of-the-art 486 DX2 66 with Maths co-processor was made defunct by the Pentium"

Funny you should mention that, only today (well, yesterday) I was reading about the 486 with on-chip FPU.

Multisync - TCP Server/Client Multiplayer Plugin (DBP/DBCe)
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Zappo
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 01:27
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Quote: "Well, this is nice, but what if we have already bought a new card..."

You will probably still be able to buy the PhysX hardware as a separate card if you wanted to.

Quote: "I remember when my state-of-the-art 486 DX2 66 with Maths co-processor was made defunct by the Pentium"

I think I still have mine in the loft. The DX2 chips doubled the clock so the mainboard actually had to be set to 33Mhz. The 486 DX 50 running at a proper 50Mhz was the 'money' processor. Ooooh baby, that could fly but sadly I couldn't afford one of those


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Aaron Miller
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 02:38
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I'm going to take a shot in the dark and make a prediction.

I predict that the next home-based (Not hand-held) sony playstation (or other console from sony) will employ a card from nVidia with both graphics/physics acceleration in their console. I mean, the Playstation 3 uses a card developed from nVidia so this could be possible in my oppinion. Anyone willing to take bets?


Cheers,

-naota

With any luck you'll be able to turn a fully functioning program to a crashing program with just a little bit of coding.
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 09:43
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I just hope Nvidia doesn't cock it up, what we have going on with Ageia is a pretty nice deal.


Come see the WIP!
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tha_rami
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Posted: 6th Feb 2008 12:29
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Naah, Cash, don't worry. The only thing'll be that they'll change the software, and when you buy it through the internet, you'll have to wait 2.5 years before the outdated version gets sent to you...


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