Will Your Next Upgrade Be a PPU?
Today's top-shelf computer games look pretty stunning, especially when you run them using a PC with a powerful graphics chip and a speedy processor. But you have to admit, even the best games still don't look completely realistic. From the way explosions appear, to the way water flows, to the way a character falls down, there's still something less than real about it. The folks at a company named Ageia say the missing element is real-world physics, and they want you to add a third processor -- a physics processing unit -- to your PC. The PPU would let game developers add more physics effects and complexity to their games.
Of course, many of today's games already employ some physics calculations, but the number of objects to which most game developers actually apply it is limited. That's because physics computations are processor intensive, and throwing too many of these calculations at the CPU can slow down the entire game. That's why Ageia created the PhysX processor.
We recently gave you a full preview of Ageia's PhysX PPU right here, so you can get the inside scoop, HH style.
