NVIDIA has announced it will acquire AGEIA, the company behind the PhysX physics solutions. (thanks, Phopojijo)
NVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA Technologies
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Not surprised at all. Will they be adding the physX technology to their existing cards? or will they just offer a whole new product? (my guess is the latter, rahter then former since they could potentially make more money) 
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rattyocaster
Up close and personal Sniper
I think it'll be a move for the better, however one question remains, what will be the case with the older physx cards? Will they need to be replaced or is it just going to be another driver to get from nVidia?
On nVidia acquiring technologies, I read a rumour in January that nVidia MAY even be buying AMD (including ATi) this year. Like I said though, this is only a rumour I read, however when the source I got it from http://www.theinquirer.net asked nVidia about it, they basically said they didn't want to comment at this time, you'd think that there'd be a more certain "No" if they weren't at least thinking about it.
On nVidia acquiring technologies, I read a rumour in January that nVidia MAY even be buying AMD (including ATi) this year. Like I said though, this is only a rumour I read, however when the source I got it from http://www.theinquirer.net asked nVidia about it, they basically said they didn't want to comment at this time, you'd think that there'd be a more certain "No" if they weren't at least thinking about it.
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Not surprised at all. Will they be adding the physX technology to their existing cards? or will they just offer a while new product? (my guess is the latter, rahter then former since they could potentially make more money)
well, that could be actually nice! if nvidia would just integrate the technology behind the PhysX cards into their motherboard's chipset, cause i think that the cards are just too busy right now to integrate the physx card onto them.
Let's hope is for the good
of course you'll have to buy a new card. there's more money in a new card than new drivers. but anyway, the new card [IRONY]will be a gazillion times better than anything Ageia even thought of in their wildest dreams and it will be the all-in-one solution for everything[/IRONY]. or something like that...
as for nvidia buying amd, i find that hard to imagine. i mean amd now includes ati. so nvidia would pretty much have a monopoly. apart from that, just imagine the huge amount of money
can they even do that?!
Woah Nvidia buying AMD, thats gotta be alittle bit of a stretch I rekon. It must have been hard enough for AMD to afford Ati, hey you never know intel could come in and buy Nvidia after they do that 
Nvidia do seem to have their own chipsets now and from what I know of these Sli is only enabled on Nvidia chipsets, where crossfire seems to be making its way to alot of intel chipset boards. I found this one alittle bit of a conflict of interest really since Ati is owned by AMD being Intels rival (yeah pretty obvious for most) but maybe Intel and AMD are both on their back foot because of Nvidia's reach.
Not only do Nvidia do chipsets, GPU's and soon hardware for physics they also reach into the console market with GPU's in the xbox and playstation 3. It gets even better from there as well since Nvidia chips arnt uncommon for Mac users either. So they seem to cover the same if not more area's than Intel, not that I have any sales figures or profit margins to back up my speculation
The most interesting thing I can think to come out of this is perhaps onboard physics processors and network optimization or dedicated bandwith for physics. Id imagine they would want to provide more solutions to gain a greater market share but thats if their sights is set on providing cards over mobo's. Im willing to put my money that they are going to try and push their chipsets even more than they do already, while you can have an intel chipset or amd chipset if you have an Nvidia one you get Sli and this possibility of hardware physics. That would mean they are essentially cutting intel and amd out of everything but the CPU, Im pretty sure AMD and Intel dont make chipsets for each others proccessors so it would be a pretty smart move on Nvidia's part. Not that I would totally agree with it but hey, something to think about
Does make you wonder if its possible for IBM to bring Cell to the PC market in some form. There seems to be some differences between Sony's and MS's versions of the chips but from what I can tell its similar to PowerPC which was actually in Mac's.
So yeah theres probably alot more going on behind the scenes in the hardware biz than we think about or realize, alliances formed and broken from generation to generation and companies double even triple dipping on the same markets to turn larger profits.
Im predicting XFX will be the next thing if anything Nvidia buys (if they dont already own it under another name), then again making their own boards didnt work out so well for 3dFX
Nvidia do seem to have their own chipsets now and from what I know of these Sli is only enabled on Nvidia chipsets, where crossfire seems to be making its way to alot of intel chipset boards. I found this one alittle bit of a conflict of interest really since Ati is owned by AMD being Intels rival (yeah pretty obvious for most) but maybe Intel and AMD are both on their back foot because of Nvidia's reach.
Not only do Nvidia do chipsets, GPU's and soon hardware for physics they also reach into the console market with GPU's in the xbox and playstation 3. It gets even better from there as well since Nvidia chips arnt uncommon for Mac users either. So they seem to cover the same if not more area's than Intel, not that I have any sales figures or profit margins to back up my speculation
The most interesting thing I can think to come out of this is perhaps onboard physics processors and network optimization or dedicated bandwith for physics. Id imagine they would want to provide more solutions to gain a greater market share but thats if their sights is set on providing cards over mobo's. Im willing to put my money that they are going to try and push their chipsets even more than they do already, while you can have an intel chipset or amd chipset if you have an Nvidia one you get Sli and this possibility of hardware physics. That would mean they are essentially cutting intel and amd out of everything but the CPU, Im pretty sure AMD and Intel dont make chipsets for each others proccessors so it would be a pretty smart move on Nvidia's part. Not that I would totally agree with it but hey, something to think about
Does make you wonder if its possible for IBM to bring Cell to the PC market in some form. There seems to be some differences between Sony's and MS's versions of the chips but from what I can tell its similar to PowerPC which was actually in Mac's.
So yeah theres probably alot more going on behind the scenes in the hardware biz than we think about or realize, alliances formed and broken from generation to generation and companies double even triple dipping on the same markets to turn larger profits.
Im predicting XFX will be the next thing if anything Nvidia buys (if they dont already own it under another name), then again making their own boards didnt work out so well for 3dFX
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BooGiTyBoY
The ImPaCt-DaMpeNeD BooGeRaToR
I think if anything nvidia would produce a "combo" card before integrating it into their chipset. They have the dual board gpu cards like the 7950 gx2 and the new 9800 series card as well. Just my opinion but it may be easier for them to just slap a gpu and physx board together that way.
WHo knows. Anyways hopefully they'll turn it into a useful and affordable technology because right now there's just not enough software to justify the price.
WHo knows. Anyways hopefully they'll turn it into a useful and affordable technology because right now there's just not enough software to justify the price.
they don't need to make it 'affordable' since there's no competition that could hope to offer something similar.
This is very very bad news for us as consumers, unless they keep the separate PhysX-card and then Ati&co would have to offer something very very fast&cheap to compete with the cards that have onboard PhysX.
This is very very bad news for us as consumers, unless they keep the separate PhysX-card and then Ati&co would have to offer something very very fast&cheap to compete with the cards that have onboard PhysX.
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Whoa, I didn't see that coming.
I'm not sure whether this is good news for consumers or not.
The whole dedicated physics card didn't seem to be getting very popular any time soon, so...
I guess now we'll never know what would've happened.
I'm not sure whether this is good news for consumers or not.
The whole dedicated physics card didn't seem to be getting very popular any time soon, so...
I guess now we'll never know what would've happened.
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[VaLkyR]Assassin
Kidneythieves and Poets of The Fall Fan
Yeah a combo card would indeed be interesting especially since Nvidia managed to chop the size of their 8000 series cards with the 8800GT so they do perhaps have some room to play with. With the highest end cards though they are already of a size big enough to need an arcade machine box to fit them in so adding another chip on there might be difficult, especially if you want to fit multiple cards in sli. I think its up to 3way sli now with the 8800gtx/ultra's and the right chipset.
It is interesting that intel owns havok as well, this could put them in a postition to go head to head with nvidia if physics processors become onboard things. I just think perhaps making them onboard will be a solution where they can hide the costs instead of people purchasing a seperate dedicated card, where you will know exactly what that physics solution costs you.
Also this could open the way for the physics processors being a core on the cpu and the north bridge taking care of some of the stuff perhaps also, similar to a new instruction set. If physics and sound are both done on cores in the cpu it could lead to optimizations between the two, then again youd be needing a pretty hardcore cpu Id imagine especially when you take into account the rest of the stuff its handling when running games.
It is interesting that intel owns havok as well, this could put them in a postition to go head to head with nvidia if physics processors become onboard things. I just think perhaps making them onboard will be a solution where they can hide the costs instead of people purchasing a seperate dedicated card, where you will know exactly what that physics solution costs you.
Also this could open the way for the physics processors being a core on the cpu and the north bridge taking care of some of the stuff perhaps also, similar to a new instruction set. If physics and sound are both done on cores in the cpu it could lead to optimizations between the two, then again youd be needing a pretty hardcore cpu Id imagine especially when you take into account the rest of the stuff its handling when running games.
I think this is a bad move.
Intel will have Havok, so it'll run best on Intel platforms.
nVidia will have Physx, so it'll run best on nVidia platforms.
AMD? Nothing, so they're going to be left out.
Intel and nVidia will continue raging war against each other so Havok will probably run absolute crud on nVidia platforms while AMD try to reason with one of them (or even both) so the physics engine will run "well" on their platform.
Intel will have Havok, so it'll run best on Intel platforms.
nVidia will have Physx, so it'll run best on nVidia platforms.
AMD? Nothing, so they're going to be left out.
Intel and nVidia will continue raging war against each other so Havok will probably run absolute crud on nVidia platforms while AMD try to reason with one of them (or even both) so the physics engine will run "well" on their platform.
And the games will suffer since every developer will have to either focus on 1 (and leave the consumers to wonder why a game doesn't run) or try to support them all (and waste resources on finding an 'average').
Nope ... it looks like that now the war for the best graphics has been settled (or at least : no one can think of new interesting features) we're going to get one about physics-engines.
And the worst bit ? No one has ever proved that you really need a physics-engine that is as complicated as Ageia's to begin with since physics can easily be faked in games.
Nope ... it looks like that now the war for the best graphics has been settled (or at least : no one can think of new interesting features) we're going to get one about physics-engines.
And the worst bit ? No one has ever proved that you really need a physics-engine that is as complicated as Ageia's to begin with since physics can easily be faked in games.