Nvidia To Aquire Ageia

[dsio]

From the frontpage:

On February 4th, Nvidia announced in a press release that it would be aquiring Ageia, a firm known for its PhysX add-in boards and the PhysX SDK, which is used in many new and cutting edge 3D games such as Unreal Tournament 2007. This is a somewhat unexpected, yet completely understandable move for Nvidia, which is gambling that Physics enhancements in games will be a much bigger deal in the advancement of the industry than they are now. As a result of this move, there are now three major players that own both Physics and graphics intelectual property. AMD achieved this when they purchased ATI, which has already demonstrated the use of its graphics cards for physics processing, and Intel has expressed interest in developing both physics acceleration technology and a new interest in higher graphics technology. There can be no doubt that of the three, Nvidia currently has the greatest 3D graphics assets, and Ageia are the current leaders in physics technology, which puts Nvidia in a very good position moving forward, but it remains to be seen exactly what Nvidia will do with their new aquisition.

Press release is here: NVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA Technologies

[Samuknow]

So, integrated Ageia chips on the next geforce?

[dsio]

Well... don't think the next Geforce since its already been made, but NVidia now has chipsets, GPUs, and PPUs (well after the takeover) so they have a lot of options.

[Samuknow]

This will be exciting for the gaming world. Maybe with nVidia having that tech now, we will see more games that can use it.

[danrok]

Hopefully, they're not just pulling a fast one, and buying them to kill them off.

Does make sense to have a PPU on the same card as the GPU. Should bring the overall cost down, for us.

[dsio]

Another interesting thing is that it seams Unreal Tournament 2007 on Linux is being held up due to a mexican standoff over the use of the PhysX SDK on Linux systems. Given that Nvidia has a some what more /open/ mind (scuttlebutt is that Nvidia is planning to open up their GPU information and release much of their closed source driver soon to follow AMD(ATI)'s lead in that area) it could be just whats needed to bring 2K7 to Fedora natively.

[danrok]

Just been playing it on PS3, excellent game.

[dsio]

Don't rub it in... for some reason, and no I don't know WHAT REASON....

I have to wait until... March 13th to get UT2007 on PS3 in Australia

And my preorder for GT5 prologue which was promised on December 5th STILL isn't here. EBGames is starting to give me the ****s.

If they would just tell me, "yea we don't actually know when it will be here" then I'd not bother preordering. Fact is they even invited me to a midnight launch for GT5... which never happened.

[danrok]

Same deal here, but I got a US copy of it.

[Aedan]

Wonder if they'll start to integrate it into their chipsets?

[Pitch]

I wonder if any more developers plan to use the API. I know UE3 uses it instead of Karma, but no game so far has taken advantage of the API in any way I can see.

[dsio]

I think we can be certain that Nvidia TWIMTBP partners certainly will eventually. Thing is, I know more people that are OpenBSD users than PhysX card users. And I /don't/ know many OpenBSD users.

Cadaveca bought one, not the best investment in the world. If Nvidia did have an integrated PPU in their chipsets, perhaps sharing system RAM like existing IGP solutions, I think people would buy it. Firstly because its Nvidia, secondly because in this age nobody wants to have a heap of add-in boards (especially PCI) and lastly because if you look on high end motherboards, 90% of the so called features are pure wank. I saw a board the other day marketed at gamers with dual gigabit NICS and 2X HDMI ports, and a remote LCD display panel with a long cord so that while you are playing games you can eagerly keep a close eye on your motherboard's POST code.

Now that's what I need! Every few minutes I use /my/ computer I start getting the jitters wondering what my motherboard is doing.

Give it a few years and they'll have a display for monitoring the impedance of the headphones you have plugged into the onboard sound card because its deeply valued technical information. "Oh ****, my 300Ohm headphones just broke 305... BLACK HAWK DOWN, I repeat BLACK HAWK DOWN"

Given how keen they are to charge for added crap on a motherboard, a PPU built in might be something I'd actually want.