Saturday, July 5th 2008
PhysX on Radeon 'Saga': What we Missed
Amidst this whole 'nGOHQ' saga, and us getting astonished at the way things turned out, here's what we missed:
NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:
"The graphics card industry pointed out that while AMD Open Table support of Havok, but Havok has been the acquisition of Intel, Havok and PhysX is the same competition on the product, AMD has its own wishful thinking, by NVIDIA and Intel in physics engine Competition and get access to two major physics engine authorization, two competition is very likely to become the largest beneficiary of AMD." (Chinese, translated by Google into English).
AMD and NVIDIA are in discussions over a common ground that allows AMD to use the PhysX API with its products. This follows the news of AMD optimizing their hardware for Havoc. There are two implications to this:
NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:
"The graphics card industry pointed out that while AMD Open Table support of Havok, but Havok has been the acquisition of Intel, Havok and PhysX is the same competition on the product, AMD has its own wishful thinking, by NVIDIA and Intel in physics engine Competition and get access to two major physics engine authorization, two competition is very likely to become the largest beneficiary of AMD." (Chinese, translated by Google into English).
AMD and NVIDIA are in discussions over a common ground that allows AMD to use the PhysX API with its products. This follows the news of AMD optimizing their hardware for Havoc. There are two implications to this:
- AMD gets to an agreement with NVIDIA and ropes in PhysX, leaving their graphics processors optimized for both physics APIs, thereby making buying a Radeon product a better option over GeForce. A short-sighted look at things to come.
- AMD plays risky, adopts PhysX, NVIDIA's developer relation programs popularize the PhysX API beyond Havoc (since now anyone can use it), eliminate Havoc, then hold a dominating position over AMD since PhysX would then become an indispensible technology for AMD, could affect the course of major corporate policies for AMD. A long-sighted look at things to come.
31 Comments on PhysX on Radeon 'Saga': What we Missed
It's a huge gamble no matter what you look at it. Nvidia is doing the biggest because of the fact that they are showing their competitor their pride and joy. But, in ways helping them, because you never know what they can learn from ATI themselves.
We'll be gaining from this subject, that we will. But, at what cost will we have it? One company of video cards in the future?
So, if they are in a meeting ATI/AMD does have a short term bargaining chip they can use to get things rolling. In the long term ATI/AMD is in the position to play double agent between PhysX and Havok.
If Nvidia wants to embrace ATI/AMD then it should be a full embrace. Nvidia gets ATI/AMD full support with Cuda, ATI gets Nvidia full advertising support. This IMHO is a even trade! No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Seriously, this is awesome stuff though. To think that know we get Physx (instead of the long ago post of ATI having a 3rd video card just for physics) using Nvidias tried and true R&D.
although i may be wrong, dont know the history that much. if someone could enlighten me .
I mean, damn, if nVidia isn't feeling truly pressured to make some drastic moves recently . . .
this is wonderful news for us consumers, though.
But, I think this move will greatly benefit AMD/ATI in the long run, while allowing nVidia to shoot themselves in the foot . . . my reasoning being that if nVidia are hoping that they can push market support for PhysX enough to run out Havok and Intel, we have to take into account they'd be pushing against Intel while AMD/ATI would still be supporting Havok as well . . . AMD/ATI stands to become the dominant physics capable hardware here over either Intel or nVidia, which will only continue to benefit them further down the road, and could potentially hurt nVidia hardware sales as well.
Either way, no matter what the red camp decides to do, they can't go wrong :toast:
Sure, Intel can have a whole CPU core dedicated to physics processing, but it still can't do it anywhere near as efficient as a GPU could. Havok would start becoming burdensome and overbearing to use if you had to rely on a CPU core; for Intel to be able to compete on a hardware level, they need ATI GPU support.
was/is firestream any good? and have ati gone anywere with it or is it just a model.
The only way Nvidia will make money from PhysX is to license it because the graphics drivers are free and there is no ppu to buy anymore.
Still id like to see a graphics card dedicated to physics, so you get get a lower model and use that for PhysX. Tri SLi you could have 2 good cards and a crappy one for PhysX.
If they License out Physx to other people they can make a bomb in cash, plus its easy to implement into games.
lol amd used to manufacture intel cpus back 20-30 years ago, then they started to do there own cpus
there was evebn that socket that could accept intel or amd cpus.
i think they were more alike back in the day.
IBM and Motorola were big cpu player years ago, motorola had all sorts of cpus, they did the cpu for the NES