23rd August 2005, 7:44 AM
I've never heard of a "Physical Processing Chip", and if you google the phrase you come up with about 6 links- all Nintendo fansites. However, if you search for PPU and ignore all the peace sites, you find this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPU">PPU</a>.
He got the name wrong, but the acornym right. I was guessing he was talking about something that would perform common physics calculations, but I wouldn't have thought something like that since it would seem very hard for the PPU to understand your code well enough to perform collision detection... I guess that is why it must be written using the manufacturer's SDK (software development kit), but I have a hard time seeing that happen. DirectX is only starting to support GPU's instructions, and those have been around for years.
But, if it is as good as it sounds, this would be pretty sweet. Physics calcualtions are a pain in the butt to do in software, and it would be really cool to make 1 function call and get the polygons your character is collding with, for example. And it would be fast. Very fast.
Another interesting thing is they specify "Dual-Threaded", instead of multi-threaded. In my understanding threading is done arbitrarily- i.e. you don't have a set number of threads but you spin up a new one when you need it. Perhaps hardware threading is different, but in Intel's description of HyperThreading (their version of hardware threading) they make it sound as if it is multi-threaded, not dual-threaded or some set number such as 2, or 3.
And to even add up the processing times like that is a joke- even to have the disclaimer that it is inaccurate but technically true is a joke. It's not even technically true.
So I am pretty sceptical about this. I won't say it's completely inaccurate, because I bet the Rev will be something similar. But I think there are enough mistakes and questions marks to doubt the validity.
But after saying all that- I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. So I could be wrong as well.
Quote:A PPU (Physics Processing Unit) is a dedicated processor designed to handle the calculations of physics, mainly in video games. Examples of calculations a PPU can do include rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, collision detection, fluid dynamics, hair and clothing simulation, finite element analysis, and fracturing of objects. The first PPU is called the PhysX chip, and was introduced by a fabless semiconductor company called Ageia.
Slated for release sometime in 2005, the PhysX will be manufactured by companies like ASUS, akin to the way graphics cards are manufactured. To be able to have hardware physics support in a game or application it has to be programmed with Ageia's Novodex SDK.
He got the name wrong, but the acornym right. I was guessing he was talking about something that would perform common physics calculations, but I wouldn't have thought something like that since it would seem very hard for the PPU to understand your code well enough to perform collision detection... I guess that is why it must be written using the manufacturer's SDK (software development kit), but I have a hard time seeing that happen. DirectX is only starting to support GPU's instructions, and those have been around for years.
But, if it is as good as it sounds, this would be pretty sweet. Physics calcualtions are a pain in the butt to do in software, and it would be really cool to make 1 function call and get the polygons your character is collding with, for example. And it would be fast. Very fast.
Another interesting thing is they specify "Dual-Threaded", instead of multi-threaded. In my understanding threading is done arbitrarily- i.e. you don't have a set number of threads but you spin up a new one when you need it. Perhaps hardware threading is different, but in Intel's description of HyperThreading (their version of hardware threading) they make it sound as if it is multi-threaded, not dual-threaded or some set number such as 2, or 3.
And to even add up the processing times like that is a joke- even to have the disclaimer that it is inaccurate but technically true is a joke. It's not even technically true.
So I am pretty sceptical about this. I won't say it's completely inaccurate, because I bet the Rev will be something similar. But I think there are enough mistakes and questions marks to doubt the validity.
But after saying all that- I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. So I could be wrong as well.