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What in the world is a physics accelerator? And how do you spell it?!?
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A Physics Processing Unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. Examples of calculations involving a PPU might include rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, collision detection, fluid dynamics, hair and clothing simulation, finite element analysis, and fracturing of objects. The idea is that specialized processors offload time consuming tasks from a computer's CPU, much like how a GPU performs graphics operations in the main CPU's place.
AGEIA PhysX™
The first processor to be advertised as a PPU was called the PhysX chip, introduced by a fabless semiconductor company called AGEIA. Games wishing to take advantage of the PhysX PPU must use AGEIA's PhysX SDK, (formerly known as the NovodeX SDK).
The PhysX is currently available from 3 companies akin to the way graphics cards are manufactured. ASUS and BFG Technologies are the primary manufacturers. PCs with the cards already installed are available from system builders such as Alienware, Dell, and Falcon Northwest.
See physics engine for a discussion of academic research PPU projects.
Havok FX™
Havok FX SDK is major competitor to the PhysX SDK. Used in more than 150 games, including major titles like Half-Life 2 and Dead Rising.
To compete with the PhysX PPU, Havok FX will be able to take advantage of multi-GPU technology from ATI (CrossFire) and NVIDIA (SLI) using existing cards to accelerate certain physics calculations.
Havok's solution divides the physics simulation into effect and gameplay physics, with effect physics being offloaded (if possible) to the GPU as Shader Model 3.0 instructions and gameplay physics being processed on the CPU as normal. The important distinction between the two are that effect physics do not affect gameplay (dust or small debris from an explosion, for example): the vast majority of physics operations are still performed in software. This approach differs significantly from the PhysX SDK, which moves all calculations to the PhysX card if it is present.
Cell Processor
The STI Cell Processor found in the Playstation 3 operates in a manner similar to the Ageia PhysX hardware; it's design was driven by similar considerations. Unlike ATI/NVidia's GPGPU solutions, and like the PhysX, this design is more about providing each parallel thread with a large working set with more of the inter-thread communication and control found in a general purpose processor. As such it is very well suited to physics calculations.
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_processing_unit
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Conclusion:
Current games have not truly incorporated heavy physics into the main engine because of technical boundaries... only a handful of games at the moment would even benefit from the physics cards (ex. Ageia PhysX)...
- Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 1 & 2
- City of Heroes/Villains
- Auto Assault
.... etc...
Future gaming might need this, but fear not. Some upcoming next-gen games (UT3, Gears or War, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway) will be using the amazing Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) thats multi-threaded, supports PhysX, as well as take advantage of multi-core CPU's to use a core for strictly physics calculations if one does not have a PhysX card.
Physics Accelerator
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Crimsonman, Jul 17, 2007.
