News Nvidia set to acquire Ageia

It would be *far* more sensible to integrate logic into the GPUs.

 

The best way for AMD to get back into the game after this news is to release a Quad core GPU, with 1 core dedicated to PPU, passivley cooled and consuming 1 W.

 

no, its intel that can't have AMD, or they'd have the entire CPU market to themselves

the GPU market would be relativelty split if you take onboard GPUs into consideration.

 

Using GPU as PPU = more burden on an already overtaxed part.





As long as we've had discrete GPUs game developers have been pushing them to (or past) their limits. Given the choice of extra power on the GPU I'm guessing most of it will still go to better screenshots (which are never "real" enough) and not better motion (which is already fairly acceptable). The way I see to change that is to make the motion (physics) so convincing that we see what we've been missing and rave about the "new realism" that "just has to be experienced".

 

I'll never understand why we need a dedicated physics processor. Quad core CPUs are slowly becoming more and more apart of a gamers rig. Why can't they just dedicate 1 CPU core to physics? I feel like this is the easiest solution.

Anyone how actually has a physics card knows that you still loose FPS when the physics are set to full. So what the hell is the point? The in game physics are too complex for even the latest in physics hardware. Why can't we step it back and just optimize for a single dedicated CPU.

We need to be able to set in game processor affinity for multithreaded games. That would rock. Now we just need multithreaded games.......

 

Because the CPU, being a general purpose processor, is nowhere near as fast at this task as a custom designed, single purpose, processor.

By your logic we could also dedicate one core to graphics and replace the GPU - hey, we could even take two and replace Crossfire / SLI. This may be done in the future BUT it won't work without a major change in the nature of the CPUs from we use today.

 

Sweetness-ness...

 

What and Intel Buying the only other serious CPU manufacturer isn't a monopoly?!!

 

Let me make this clear - Nvidia can't make a CPU (like we know one as) and Intel and AMD will never, ever join or be bought out.

Intel will make a GPU part, although I expect workstation GPGPU built on IA and it will continue to funnel money into Havok.

 

i think the slow down is partly due to the extra coordination the CPU and GPU need to make with the PPU, as well as all the extra stuff the GPU now needs to draw each frame rather than the PPU being taxed too much. anyone know for sure?

i think we'll see something similar to ATI's Physics on Crossfire (http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/physics/index.html) from NVidia first since the GPU's are supposed to be able to do general purpose calculations anyway (write a compiler/recompile the engine or design a whole new card/chipset, which sounds easier and cheaper to you?).

 

Its' because the PPU generates more things to render for the GPU, as well as inter-CPU/PPU/GPU/engine co-ordination, hence the slow down.