15th April 2007, 1:46 AM
In fact they are, and GPUs as well. With multi-core GPUs, I think dedicated physics cards are eventually going to be replaced before they really even become that popular. Simply put, they can design the GPU with all the physics instructions of the dedicated chip and then just have one of the cores dedicated to those instructions.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)