Better Blood Splatters: introduction of the PPU

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00737/

Speaks about the introduction of the PPU, a chip solely designed to handle Physics calculations.

We have seen what physics can to do a game. HL2 was hung on it for a great deal, and we will undoubtly see more games with at least such advanced physics in the near future. Normal GPU's like todays aren't much optimized for doing physics calculations, so much has to be done by the CPU, causing lower framerates. Lifting the work off them both and having it done by a specialised chip could increase framerates a great deal.

I understand Ed's critisism, and i believe it to be fairly correct. However, wouldn't it be great for people like me with a fairly decent CPU and GPU to have that thing? My 9800XT can handle the bells and whistles of most new games just fine (no AA/AF though), but its having a hard time doing the physics. Having such a special addon card would allow me to keep my current VGA longer (thus saving money from an upgrade).

Then, in the future, when my 9800XT starts to get really old, not only for the physics but also for the rest of the stuff (insufficient texture memory for example) i could upgrade to a newer card, and keep the PPU with it.

It would stretch the life of my current card, and help me enjoy my next one better. If it is sub-150$, that would be reason enough for me to consider buying it.

I think 150 or less is the sweet spot for this as a seperate card.

And it is clear that people are willing to pay alot for a standalone card to offer minor FPS bonus's as demonstraited by Creatives sound cards.

I dont see this as something that will be nessesary for better blood splatter. Better blood splatter and other niffty effects would come out with or without this, this is about better preformance to me.

And for a standalone card, will this be something that you buy once, and when you upgrade you can stick it in your new machine?

Game support will make or break it, Epic is onboard, I think if id's next engines use it, it will have enough market to be viable.

So now we have:
GPUs: for graphics
PPUs: for physics
APUs: for sound
and
CPUs: for AI and whatever

So I hope this can mean some better AI (not harder AI, but AI that doesn't walk into a wall) given more reasources availble to it.

9mmCensor said:

So I hope this can mean some better AI (not harder AI, but AI that doesn't walk into a wall) given more reasources availble to it.

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Exactly. You can make the AI smarter and smarter untill it ain't no more fun playing them. I've seen custom maps for Red Alert 2, Generals and Raven Shield with modified AI's...its almost scary playing some of them, not even talking about beating them at high difficulty level.

Smarter isn't the keyword anymore...'more human' would be, i think.

I think ED hit the nail on the head with the comment about these being built into videocards in the future. He is right that there are a lot of problems with running it in a PCI slot, and although a few may come out like this I don't think they will be around for long. It is much more cost effective to just build this right onto the videocard, and if gives the manufactuer that all important selling feature over the "other" guy. (meaning they will both have it)

With dual core CPU's on the way I really feel this PPU is mostly a pointless add on. I am well aware that a hardware based solution is much more efficient than an emulator running off a cpu (software). If dual cores are going to be so great and feature rich, I would think they would be able to help out greatly in the physics department and not require me to spend another $100+ to play my $50 game the way its meant to be played. Putting the physics on the GPU is fine with me as it will free up the cpu, but we do not need a whole new hardware device for this.

Putting it on the GPU will raise the cost of Craphics cards though.

So why not go standalone and buy one card, instead of buying the chip on every graphics card.

I think the intention of the company that designed it is to both release a stand-alone card and to have it integrated into graphics cards and motherboards.

Gnufsh said:

I think the intention of the company that designed it is to both release a stand-alone card and to have it integrated into graphics cards and motherboards.

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I doubt if that would be of any advantage. The same chip on a loose card may be a little more expensive then having it built onto your VGA, but the loose one is interchangable, and most importantly, upgradable.

Sjaak said:

Exactly. You can make the AI smarter and smarter untill it ain't no more fun playing them. I've seen custom maps for Red Alert 2, Generals and Raven Shield with modified AI's...its almost scary playing some of them, not even talking about beating them at high difficulty level.

Smarter isn't the keyword anymore...'more human' would be, i think.

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Oh god,... Maybe the Terminator will exist someday...

*edit*
Maybe the Terminator AND the Matrix will exist someday...

Swatdog said:

Oh god,... Maybe the Terminator will exist someday...

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I bet his CPU can be overclocked

Sjaak said:

I bet his CPU can be overclocked

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haha he'll be like T400 "Uber fast terminator"... He'll be able to tear down a building in 4 secs flat.

Swatdog said:

haha he'll be like T400 "Uber fast terminator"... He'll be able to tear down a building in 4 secs flat.

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I bet he has some sort of ram, too, it must be upgradable

Hmz. Isn't the terminator just a heavily overclocked version of Homo Sapiens?

Swatdog said:

Oh god,... Maybe the Terminator will exist someday...

*edit*
Maybe the Terminator AND the Matrix will exist someday...

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Or maybe a Matrix for the Terminators?

Gnufsh said:

Or maybe a Matrix for the Terminators?

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Maybe we are already in a matrix controlled by terminators and they have just filmed what happened before and now they're showing us to make us believe how ridiculous the idea is.

HAH...self-supporting statement

Back on track...

Something like this would be great. No question, just great.
$150 or less sounds quite sweet for something of this type, as a standalone card (really, people, graphics cards are expensive enough. Don't make them worse. Also, it sounds like this processor needs its own dedicated memory, not shared with a video card's).
I can really see a PCI slot being a difficult thing to work with, bandwidth-wise, for this kind of thing, though.
And not everyone will jump on the dual-cpu bandwagon, at least not right off the bat. Keep in mind that we still don't really know just how they will work together, unless I missed something really big (very possible, really).

But this sounds like something that will have to be worked into individual games from a programmer's standpoint, rather than just an add-on card, say something like a sound card. This needs to be worked from the ground up, much more like a graphics card. Does anyone really see just slapping in this card, and suddenly shattering glass can hurt you in GTA, or your hair suddenly moves with the breeze in Morrowind? Nah, this has to be worked out.

That said, there isn't any point in buying one of these yet, even if they existed for sale... does anyone have a guess at just when these things will be worth getting? I realize that the question is subjective, but fire away.

That said... man, if I thought it might actually do something at this point, I would shell for one of these in a minute. Or at least the moment Newegg puts one on special.

~N.

By the bye - did anyone check out the pdf on the site that Ed linked to? It's supposed to give a mission statement (or something) about the product. It mentions that regular CPUs are not really proper for the handling of physics, but doesn't go the least bit into why this is so. Ideas?
linky: http://www.ageia.com/pdf/wp_2005_3_physics_gameplay.pdf

Should be good on PCIe. I would really like to see this integrated into motherboards as a default, like soundcards have become. Then we wouldn't have to worry about it, it's just be there.

But the dual core thing is a good point. Don't know if it's worth the extra cash. Then there's the chicken and egg thing...

I hope that something like this does catch on, and development skyrockets like video accelerators did. I would SOOO love to have a game with a completely real-time environment, where anything can be blown up, knocked over, moved, or otherwise react just like real life, no limitations. No more "If only I could..."

Narcissus said:

By the bye - did anyone check out the pdf on the site that Ed linked to? It's supposed to give a mission statement (or something) about the product. It mentions that regular CPUs are not really proper for the handling of physics, but doesn't go the least bit into why this is so. Ideas?
linky: http://www.ageia.com/pdf/wp_2005_3_physics_gameplay.pdf

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Probably just like the GPU situation

. The CPU is a chip designed for general math, and streamlined for the type of logic decisions common in applications. Lots of ifs then's and whatnot, lots of branching.

GPUs are designed for calculation lighting and textures and stuff like that. They probably have some of the most common algorithms hardcoded into the chip for ultra-fast calculation.

I amagine the PPU is the same. Simply a chip designed primarily for handling data like directions, forces, etc, with all the most common equations for handling interactions between particles hardcoded.

Back in the mid 90s, I was toying with an idea for a 3D graphics engine that did everything from the physics upwards, was toying with the idea of prototyping it with z80s connected in a hypercube, optimised for vector matrix calculations. I forget all the details now, but it seemed like a good plan at the time, and the math was fresher in my head. Anyhoo, what I'm trying to say is, that it occured to me now and then, that a "real" 3D engine would start with the physics and build everything else on that. So I'd say a radical bottom up redesign of GPUs is in order, rather than some tack-on solution. I did the math on the rendering speed of my idea, and it seemed horribly horribly slow, and I didn't think that any prototype I was capable of making at the time would have been fast enough to show off the tech in an interesting manner.

My design would have been "wasteful" though in that it would have rendered the complete scene from every angle at once, memory requirements were insane (I think the 64Kb addressing limit of the z80 was a putoff there too) but I think that's where 3D graphics need to be headed to prepare for real 3 dimensional display hardware. Second or third viewpoints of the same scene could be displayed on other monitors though with barely any more overhead. I had ideas for 3 dimensional display hardware also, but I'm still waiting for an easily useable serial bus technology that can transfer around 700 Megabytes a second before I can consider a low res 1 bit per voxel (monochrome) prototype, never mind the rendering hardware that could back it up.

Anyhoo, it's time is due, but it's being talked of like a retrofit, it will be like a horseless carriage with an internal combustion engine strapped to it.

Road Warrior

Very interesting....if the price is right Ill buy one

now this kind of thing would allso be sweet for flight simulators, ETC.
heck, sounds like with todays fast connections, you might even be able to fly that little model airplaine around the neighborhood via your computer ( with lots of radio hardware and sensors), Silly - sure, but looking more possible.... uncle sam can do it allready...

but i think the potential of the idea is there, and the details will work themselves out eventually as to how the idea is applied - i would allmost say the real test is finding more and more cool things that could be done with it once its a reality...