Could Quad Core kill Ageia?

placeboFx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2005
Messages
247
I would like to say that I am very excited to see how the physx card will work. Though it begs the question "Why are we building muli core cpus only to bottleneck physics calculations on an independent card which is limited to the bus the motherboard can move it?". It seems to me that it would be more benificial to write the physics algorithms and thread them to one of the cores on the cpu. I'm not saying that the aegia card is a dumb idea I just don't see any benefit to it when it multi core processors are built to address these issues? As I write this I imagine someone writing something very similar about 3D graphics cards in the 90's.

Anyways I was just curious as to what everyone else thought?
 
Yes, I think it could. For exactly the reason you said. Why Run Physics Calcs over the Pci Bus (Or even the Pcie Bus when we could do em at core speed...on it's own core no less.


Eedit for Speeliong
 
The PhysX core is highly paralleled, so it can calculate lots of things at once. Think about it almost like 50-way Hyperthreading. If you put 3 CPU's and one PPU on a die, that would GREATLY raise the cost of the processor, and would mean a new chipset that could talk to the physics core. You would also need a lot of motherboard real estate for the PhysX stuff. I don't see this happening for a niche market. Possible? Yes. Probable? Certainly not.
 
I think that problem will be resolved when game code become more multi-threaded. Right now they only mate the two cores together and crunch data as it comes. However, if you can load-balance the cores better you could render parallel data streams couldn't you?

I'm sorry if I am not making too much sense. I'm exhausted.
 
A Quadcore CPU running physics on all 4 cores, would still come up short compared to Ageia's PPU.
Physics is massively parrallel wich can be seen by the fact that the PhysX has an internal banwidth of 2 TeraBytes per second!

And the PPU is inded alreay "quad core"..it has 4 quads for physics.

Terra...
 
I just feel that maybe some new instruction sets, improved multi-threading, and possible core design changes you could build a gamer centric processor or a physics centric processor. I would rather have this option included on the cpu die than add another card for another hardware solution.
 
placeboFx said:
I just feel that maybe some new instruction sets, improved multi-threading, and possible core design changes you could build a gamer centric processor or a physics centric processor. I would rather have this option included on the cpu die than add another card for another hardware solution.

You are forgetting about bandwith....
And the fact that a CPU is general purpose.
The question would be the same as asking:

Could Quad Core kill ATI/NVIDIA?

Terra...
 
placeboFx said:
I just feel that maybe some new instruction sets, improved multi-threading, and possible core design changes you could build a gamer centric processor or a physics centric processor. I would rather have this option included on the cpu die than add another card for another hardware solution.

Its not feasible from an economic standpoint. The PhysX is 120 million transistors. So to make something competitive you would need to effectively DOUBLE the size of the CPU. This would mean more than double the development costs...all to fill a niche market. You would never even be able to recoup the development costs most likely, much less turn a profit.
 
Great point!

Terra you have given this a great deal of thought haven't you? I am so glad that you have taken the time to answer my questions. Thank you.

The reason I am so curious is the demo videos show such an impressive amount interaction. But I just wish it didn't come at the expense of me incurring more cost and more potential headaches from mobo compatibility, device driver issues and additional cost.

Oh well, I suppose it's like all things. If you really want it, you will pay for it.
 
Too much Freelancer...I thought the topic said "Agiera" (those of you who've played it will know :)). Anyways...PPU won't die to quad cores. Look at the X360 and PS3...they both are running physics somewhat vector'ized (at least discrete from the main) to maximize performance. The PhysX is an insanely fast vector unit that handles massive gobs of physics massively parallely. Nothing consumer-grade can match it, since the PhysX is optimized for one thing: Physics, and it does it very well.
 
When I spoke to a developer at infinity ward we spoke about how they had written the volumetric smoke in COD2 on an independent thread which was rendered on one of the cpu cores. Though he may have been speaking about the physx chip so I could be mistaken. I think that is the pin that keeps me leaning toward my train of thought.

I'm going to see if I can dig something up. If anyone else knows how it's done please put the smackdown on me.
 
placeboFx said:
Great point!

Terra you have given this a great deal of thought haven't you? I am so glad that you have taken the time to answer my questions. Thank you.

I was interested in the PPU from the first day I heard about.
Only thing I regret is that I didn't come up with the idea myself ;) *L*
And no need to thank me, this is what a forum is all about ;)

The reason I am so curious is the demo videos show such an impressive amount interaction. But I just wish it didn't come at the expense of me incurring more cost and more potential headaches from mobo compatibility, device driver issues and additional cost.

Oh well, I suppose it's like all things. If you really want it, you will pay for it.

Yup, preformance in computers seldom come for free.
One funny part though is that you see people shell out cash bigtime to go SLI/CrossFire...and then compalin over how "expensice" the PPU is...mindboogling *L*

Terra - I will get one...when they are for sale here in Denamrk...one more thing to toy around with :)
 
placeboFx said:
When I spoke to a developer at infinity ward we spoke about how they had written the volumetric smoke in COD2 on an independent thread which was rendered on one of the cpu cores. Though he may have been speaking about the physx chip so I could be mistaken. I think that is the pin that keeps me leaning toward my train of thought.

I'm going to see if I can dig something up. If anyone else knows how it's done please put the smackdown on me.

The dynamics of fluids/air/smoke are also phycis.
And the Physx is also very capale in that filed.
It's designed from the ground up to do one thing...physics.
But I am sure as the PPU get more widespread, the fact that is is a MASSIVE parrellel programmable processor wil be "exploited" by others in way I can't even imagine yet :cool: :D

Terra...
 
Erasmus354 said:
Its not feasible from an economic standpoint. The PhysX is 120 million transistors. So to make something competitive you would need to effectively DOUBLE the size of the CPU. This would mean more than double the development costs...all to fill a niche market. You would never even be able to recoup the development costs most likely, much less turn a profit.

Yeah, to respin a bit my fraise from before, think about it like adding a 7800/X1900 core into the CPU...
That would not be either economical...or very benificial IMHO.

Terra...
 
You've got it nailed!

I love gadgets and this one seems like another reason for your friends to drool over your system while their "Dell-erons" can't even run old games well. Man does that last statement come off as ego-centric.
 
placeboFx said:
You've got it nailed!

I love gadgets and this one seems like another reason for your friends to drool over your system while their "Dell-erons" can't even run old games well. Man does that last statement come off as ego-centric.

Is your nick in some way a mocking of HavockFX? :D *L*

Terra - I like it BTW if it is ;) *L*
 
Thanks
No I actually had to come up with it on the fly when I was registering my name with Xbox Live. I think I was having a discussion about viagra at the time and of course "placebo" came to mind.

I was curious about Terra BTW. Terrafirma?
 
Oh yeah

I have a suggestion for the use a physics card. How about hit detection like the good old days of Soldier of Fortune? I want realtime brainmatter flying at half the speed of the bullet that hit my enemies head.
 
placeboFx said:
Thanks
No I actually had to come up with it on the fly when I was registering my name with Xbox Live. I think I was having a discussion about viagra at the time and of course "placebo" came to mind.

I was curious about Terra BTW. Terrafirma?

Back in the Amiga days we where for guys in our very first Lotus Elite(car game)clan.
We used nicks derived from the 4 elements:
Terra (earth)
Aero (air)
Aqua (water)
Fuero (fire)

I stuck with that nick ever since...even if some people mistake that for a "female" name ;) *L*

Terra - On sites where Terra is reserved I go by the nick Terracide :)
 
placeboFx said:
Oh yeah

I have a suggestion for the use a physics card. How about hit detection like the good old days of Soldier of Fortune? I want realtime brainmatter flying at half the speed of the bullet that hit my enemies head.

What you are describing there is already in the PPU and it's drivers ;)
Collision dection, kinetic force, fluids ect ;)
It's now up to game programmers to implement it into games...from the ground up, and not a "strap on" like in GRAW.

Terra...
 
I can't wait to try one. I think i'll wait till hits best buy though. In case it doesn't deliver I don't want to have to mail it back. But I think this is the next step in computer hardware.
 
placeboFx said:
I can't wait to try one. I think i'll wait till hits best buy though. In case it doesn't deliver I don't want to have to mail it back. But I think this is the next step in computer hardware.

A lot of us think so too ;)
And the funny thing was back when there was talk over wheter or not that PPU's should have their own subforum here on Hard, someone actually stated it wasn't a good idea and compared it to the VIA CPU subforum..it got off to a big start, and then "died out".
Took less than a month then the PPU forum had more posts, and this subforum is growing every day ;)

Terra...
 
It's funny you should mention that cause as I was writing the first post I couldn't help but feel like some old timer that just can't accept the inevitability of additional hardware.

Like that quote from Bill Gates stating that 1024k is all the memory anyone will ever need. However it goes.
 
placeboFx said:
Like that quote from Bill Gates stating that 1024k is all the memory anyone will ever need. However it goes.

Off-topic: That was a myth. It was 637kb, but there are no sources to prove him ever saying this, and it's been denied by Microsoft and Gates.
 
i think dual core killed ageia.

i think any benifit ageia physics cards HAD are imediatly negated by having a dual core cpu.
 
brandinb said:
i think dual core killed ageia.

i think any benifit ageia physics cards HAD are imediatly negated by having a dual core cpu.

So your claim is that an dual-core CPU is as power to physics as Agiea's PPU?
Do you also think that a dual-core is as powerfull to graphics as a top-of-the-lin ATI/NVIDIA GPU?

Terra...
 
does anyone think that current games will ever have patches for the physx card? Such as oblivion? Or does the game have to be built from the ground up with the physx SDK?
 
Even if 3 cores could represent the same power as a physix card are you really willing to give up those cores in order to play your game? All you will have left is 1 core to processes everything else. Also all that data being pushed through your ram will surly bog you down a lot.
I would rather have a card process it then my extra precious cpu cycles.
 
S_G said:
Off-topic: That was a myth. It was 637kb, but there are no sources to prove him ever saying this, and it's been denied by Microsoft and Gates.


You know I wondered how true that was. If you have read his book that statement seems out of place because he is always "forward thinking" <Let the hate begin.
 
placeboFx said:
You know I wondered how true that was. If you have read his book that statement seems out of place because he is always "forward thinking" <Let the hate begin.

No hate from me.
I also have looked into it a found it to be a myth.

Terra...
 
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