PC Hardware: Ageia PhysX Interview

Now this is something fairly interesting. Ageia plans to release a Physics Processing Unit with 128MB of GDDR3. According to the exclusive interview with Gamer's Depot, this should allow a PC to go from processing physics for 30-40 bodies on a high-end machine, to a maximum of 40,000!

They plan to make boards with either a PCI Express (1x/4x) or standard PCI interface, as well as on-board solutions. The memory they state should remain pretty static. They don't really explain why, but I surmise that it's because generating 40,000 bodies with physics for all of them will require a great deal fo content generation, and isn't likely to ever hit that maximum level.

I can't even begin to fathom how something like the Havok physics engine, or a physics-heavy title like Half-Life 2 could benefit from supporting such an upgrade card. They state that they already have 5-15 games "that really matter" to support the hardware at launch.

Strangely, what I feel might be the best application of this has little to do with the physics themselves ... it's the benefits of off-loading the physics to a separate processor that intrigue me. We might finally see some real advances in terms of AI techniques, making NPCs that can truly react to their environments. That will go a long way to improving the believability of characters in games. Better physics and interaction is just the icing on the cake.

The trick is, will it sell? When you can't see in static screenshots on a box what the benefit is, will consumers buy it? Hard to tell right now, but we'll see how things progress over the next year.