AGEIA’s “PhysX” physics chip supposedly provides hardware accelerated physics for computer games (and ostensibly other applications). This is an interesting idea, as interactive physics are important for creating convincing virtual worlds. Even a bare-bones matrix math accelerator chip would be great for speeding up the heavy calculus that a physics engine has to deal with.
There are only a couple problems with this product:
The thing is expected to retail for around $200. One can buy an entire console for that much
Dedicated physics hardware is probably going to be pretty fast, but useless for any non-physics calculations. Multicore chips will probably wipe out most dedicated hardware (maybe even GPUs) in the not so distant future. Furthermore, extra general processing units will accelerate any task.
The PhysX chip needs an extra molex connector for power, so you can bet it runs pretty hot. My computer sounds like a jet engine as it is.
Novodex is the defacto API, and is not free. (Though I like Novodex a lot)
So, sadly, there will be no hardware-accelerated ninja physics in the near future for me.
