Gaming Physics: Einstein on a PCB
Info: BFGtech

It was March 2005 when Guru3D.com heard that there might be a new contender in the graphics cards arena. The rumors surrounding the company Ageia hinted that they were to be responsible for  the second '3dfx' like graphics revolution for PC games by releasing what they called the PhysX, PPU (Physics Processing Unit). According to AGEIA, things don't just look authentic; they act real and feel real. Massively destructible buildings and landscapes; explosions that cause collateral damage; believable characters with spectacular new weapons; pragmatic smoke, fog and cool oozing fluids are all now possible.

Hardware purely dedicated for that task; and with the spotlight on accelerating Physics.

Ageia believes that games can be at a far better gaming experience once you will not only calculate pixels but also common real-world physics, in this case with their special processor.

So in a way you could look at the PPU as another gaming processor for a GPU. The new PPU that they have released has no less than 125 million transistors on-board, which is the average transistor count of your current DX9 mid-range graphics card and is bound to make some magic happen; but only if the game actually supports it.

The cards are made by board partners like Asus & BFG and have a PCI interface and 128 MB gDDR3 memory. The magic of the PPU can be found in additionally calculating impressive features like fluid collision detection, rigid body dynamics, soft bodies, clothing and hair simulations and calculating damage. By unloading the CPU and GPU it'll be possible to render scene's with a huge number of polygons very realistically while maintaining an good framerate as the CPU does not have to do these complex physics calculations.

A few months ago (roughly April/May) Ageia released the Physx PPU and ever since had a really rough start. It's biggest problem is having actual support from the software houses. MANY have dedicated themselves to include Physx in future games but oh man ... I feel sorry for you if you bought a Physx board for 250/300 USD with only a game or three supporting it. That's some really expensive Physx calculation. The games that currently support the Physx cards are Ghost Recon (GRAW), City of Villains, Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport and Cellfactor. We can expect other titles, obviously that will take time. Major players here are Epic, Monolith and Gas Powered Games as they inevitably will support the Physx cards.

One of the board partners of this aggressive new idea & innovation is BFG. They recently submitted a PhysX board to Guru3D.com, which we'll have a look at today.