News Nvidia considers porting PhysX to OpenCL

theres much better physics engines then PhysX so not likely and remember for these companies to use physX they have to pay nvidia to license it so they would most likely go with OpenCL for its physics.

 

why do you all care so much. The important thing is that we get better hardware to run our increasingly graphcis intensive games on. You guys talk about heads in arses and yet you act like you got that problem yourself.

 

I think this is a great strategy for NVIDIA. They are pushing the adoption of PhysX--the technology that they own, while preserving their performance edge for the near future. If they open up the API, it means that any game is free to adopt PhysX and pay NVIDIA for the privilege. At the same time, since NVIDIA owns the code and has a much better idea than ATI on how to optimize for PhysX, they have the lead that probbably would require ATI to work for a couple of years to close.

 

The havok system seems more like an attempt by Ati to open up Physx then serious competition for now. I would have thought Nvidia always realised they'd have to support physx on cuda in the end but are holding on as long as possible until they can make some more money out of it (i.e. more important games do a mirrors edge meaning more people buy Nvidia to play).

 

If physX is ported to openCL, then that means NV's own cuda is not involved.

That means PhysX will just be an API ran on open CL which is passed to the GPU to perform task.

In that case PhysX shouldn't ever be able to tell what GPU it's running on, so NV wouldn't be able to cripple ATi performance through that.

Performance and implementation would be down to the devs wouldn't it?

Either way, openCL is good for us, the enthusiasts because it'll be able to stop completely propriety standards being forced on us and having to buy specific hardware because the competition doesn't support this one feature.

Well propriety standards aren't so bad as long as they aren't controlled by those who are making the hardware to run it.

With DX being controlled by MS, and with it being a part of windows as its standard software keeps hardware competition where it should be, making powerful hardware to follow standards set by a third party.

/end ramble

 

NVIDIA could cripple ATI's performance by focusing on OpenCL commands that run better on NVIDIA's fewer but more complex shaders rather than ATI's more numerous yet simpler cores.

(Correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

well isnt the real deal here is that AMD is showing true physics processing on the GPU instead of nVidia half assed attempt of needing to use cuda which uses some of the cpu still to process and convert it to something the gpu can use? or is AMD doing the same thing with their Stream and I just over looked that part?

 

AFAIK CUDA and OpenCL are both APIs that programmers use to send general-purpose computing instructions to the GPU. They are similar, except CUDA is proprietary and OpenCL is, well, open.

Which one is more efficient is another story, but I would guess they are very close in that aspect up to a point where it's negligible.

 

I'm I the only one who feels like this is only a reaction to: "AMD demonstrates Havok with GPU acceleration via OpenCL"?

 

Physx SDK still costs nothing to license and it seems reasonably inevitable that Nvidia will port Physx over to it. It isn't in their interests to cripple Physx on ATI cards - they've offered it to them but ATI/AMD turned them down, but they still want game developers to use it. What Nvidia can do is make their GPU's more suitable for GPGPU/CUDA/OpenCL applications and have an advantage that way. OpenCL is an open platform - well as open as an Apple product can be and opens up more avenues for Physx, bearing in mind that Havok licensing costs money. It seems obvious that ATI turned Nvidia down out of pride/spite but have had to get into bed with Intel (Havok's parent) instead because they didn't have a game physics solution of their own.

 

havok has been around and used in many games.. physx was brought in as a gimmick.. was never needed- it was just a way for them to get devs to add it, then you have to have an nvidia card to get added effects

and quality control on opencl- what a joke.. that's where they should have been in the first place

 

PhysX cost money just like Havoc does to Lic. and no ATI never actually turned down PhysX as nVidia actually has yet to offer it to them. OpenCL is NOT an apply product, its a comity based project, Apple happens to be one of the many who are involved. ATI has mentioned about why they didnt develope their own PhysX app and thats because they were aware of OpenCL and DX11 and aiming their cards to support those standards because more game companies will use that over what PhysX and Havoc will offer as it will have a greater reach, so why waste money in a proprietary app. Doublecheck your facts just a bit.

 

The binary SDK is free
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html

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