AMD GPU-accelerated physics

With Intel having bought Havok and Nvidia having bought Ageia, what will AMD do for GPU-accelerated physics? AMD said they will not use PhysX at all and I would think they would need to license from Intel to have a GPU-accelerated Havok engine for ATI graphics cards.

Havok FX was the first implementation of GPU-accelerated physics but I guess it never caught ground.

Could they make their own physics engine or rely on open source implementations? What if nothing ever comes out, and even if one does why would game developers use this over Havok/PhysX?

AMD has already done a tech demo showcasing GPU-accelerated AI using in-house tools, but I've seen nothing on physics.

they're working with intel to provide havok physics acceleration for games.

but i admit, i'm highly jealous of that mirrors edge physx demo for the pc... wish they'd hurry up and port physx to ati cards already

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-physx-ati,5764.html

The few games I have which support PhysX, actually run much worse with GPU PhysX enabled. FPS is cut in half, and that's not an over-exaggeration. It's much better to let the CPU do physics instead. The only way to get a performance boost is to buy a 2nd card and dedicate it to PhysX.

The whole 'GPU physics' thing isn't very refined right now and I think Nvidia kind of rushed it, while AMD doesn't want to heavily promote it until they find some more mainstream viability for that concept. But they do work with Intel for providing Havoc physics (not GPU accelerated) for many games.

AMD says PhysX will die

Godfrey Cheng, Director of Technical Marketing in AMD's Graphics Product Group, has said that PhysX will die if it remains a closed and proprietary standard.

"There is no plan for closed and proprietary standards like PhysX," said Cheng. "As we have emphasised with our support for OpenCL and DX11, closed and proprietary standards will die."

Click to expand...

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12/11/amd-exec-says-physx-will-die/1

redrumy3 said:

AMD says PhysX will die

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12/11/amd-exec-says-physx-will-die/1

Click to expand...

What do you expect AMD to say??? At this point AMD may not even make it through 2009 to take
advantage of any later Physics on GPU standard that exists after that.

With the current economy and CPU's that can not come close to competing with Intels, AMD is again
looking at hugh and increasing quarterly losses in 2009 with no way to get financing. Even Abu Dhabi
has it's limit as to what they will do to keep AMD a float at this point.

Hopefully ATI will be spun off and somebody will pick it up while AMD is still just circling the drain and
before they go in.

Viper

redrumy3 said:

AMD says PhysX will die



http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12/11/amd-exec-says-physx-will-die/1

Click to expand...

I guess they think DX11 and Havok will die too since they are both closed and proprietary ...

OpenCL graphics/physics/AI/audio/network etc. engines are pretty far off from being in developer's hands, so I guess AMD will be behind CPU-accelerated physics until they come around.