Nvidia PhysX = Software or Hardware

[ThEcLiT]

Nvidia PhysX = Software or Hardware

I want to know if Nvidia PhysX is based on software or they used some kind of new hardware on 8,9,200 series cards for this? thx
and any good articals explains nvidia physx is based on software or hardware or both clearly? thx

some interesting news :
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvi...-ati,5764.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvi...hysx,5841.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...hysx-for-wii/1

[JonasBeckman]

I might be totally wrong here but first of all it depends on the title, PhysX can enhance programs in a variety of ways but most of the games using it only uses software physics for simple stuff like character ragdolls and smaller particle effects whereas some titles uses hardware capabilities to enhance effects like particles (Density and the amount of them.) fluids and cloth plus some other thing (AGEIA PPU can also do rigid bodies which I'm a bit uncertain about but CUDA will probably provide for this with the 3.0.0 PhysX drivers, current ones are 2.8.2 something if I remember correctly.)

As for how it works the AGEIA cards used a PPU to handle the calculations, not too fast compared to a processor but much faster on those calculations, it also had a bit of RAM to help things out, NVIDIA ported this via CUDA and their so called stream processors from the NV 8 series and up and it'll also use the cards VRAM to help things out a bit.

Speed wise the AGEIA PPU needs to process via the CPU and GPU whereas the NVIDIA CUDA cards can do things directly via the GPU so they'll be a bit more efficient as seen in heavily accelerated titles like Mirrors Edge and Sacred 2.

There's some more info via NVIDIA's public forums and the developer forums if you're interested.

http://developer.nvidia.com/forums/i...p?showforum=16
(Developer forum, PhysX section.)

[Glidefan]

Well, PhysX is hardware accelerated on the GeForce cards, but it is being driven via a driver.
Some games implement a CPU solution (basically games that use physics for gameplay like a puzzle game.)
But so far those that use it for eye candy are using the GPU.
Now, whether nvidia inserted something extra in the GPUs, that i don't know but i'm guessing it is the architecture of the whole GPU that allows the card to accelerate them, rather than extra stuff. (i.e. the way the various calculation units are implemented).

[sykozis]

Stream Processors + CUDA = PhysX works. Stream Processors made GPGPU features possible. So, technically, yes...nVidia did add something extra....but the stream processors were also a requirement of Dx10. DX11, will also make heavy use of Stream Processors once all the drivers are written to enable all DX11 features.

[ThEcLiT]

thx all for informations and answers. i think i got my answer clearly. thx all again.

here is an email i saw at 1 forum.

Discussion Thread
Response (KR) 05/16/2009 04:14 PM
Hello xxxxx,

Thank you for contacting Nvidia customer care.

This is kiran assisting you with this issue.

Thank you for the information mentioned in your mail.

Please be informed that the PhysX technology is available in both Hardware and software version.

For Hardware: The NVIDIA PhysX card that can be installed in the PCI slot of your motherboard or the GeForce GTX 200 series of cards that has the dedicated PhysX chipset to accelerate PhysX while gaming.

For Software: All GeForce 8, 9, and GTX 200 series graphics cards with at least 256 MB of local onboard graphics memory will be able to accelerate NVIDIA PhysX while using driver release 180.08 and higher.

You will experience the major graphics difference and better gaming environment with the hardware PhysX i.e. with the dedicated PhysX Processor.

Please feel free to contact us for further clarifications.

Best regards,
Kiran
NVIDIA Customer Care
Customer (xxxxx) 05/16/2009 07:55 AM
Hi,
I am very interested with PhsyX technology.

On a discussion in our language, the users say(declare), the technology is sowftware bases.

Could you please descirebe easily, PhsyX is software bases or hardware bases. I will use your answer as a clue.

[chinobino]

Is it just me or does the nVidia guy sound like he is just iterating his own version of PhysX?

For Hardware: The NVIDIA PhysX card that can be installed in the PCI slot of your motherboard

For starters there is no "NVIDIA PhysX card" it's actually an AGEIA Physx PCI card, nVidia bought out AGEIA but never made their own dedicated Physx PCI card.

or the GeForce GTX 200 series of cards that has the dedicated PhysX chipset to accelerate PhysX while gaming.

Dedicated chipset? lol

If it was truly "dedicated" to Physx then how would it render the other non-PhysX visuals? Poor choice of words.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_gtx_280.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_gtx_260.html

No mention of any special "chipset" being added for physx, only the implentation of CUDA via the unified shader architecture or "processing cores" as they call them on their site.

For Software: All GeForce 8, 9, and GTX 200 series graphics cards with at least 256 MB of local onboard graphics memory will be able to accelerate NVIDIA PhysX while using driver release 180.08 and higher.

Interesting that he mentions driver 180.08, I was running Physx way back on driver 177.92 on my 8800GT's...



Back on topic - is PhysX software or hardware?

Answer = Both.

You must have the hardware (unified shader architecture) required to run the software (CUDA + PhysX).

So what's the one thing that "All GeForce 8, 9, and GTX 200 series graphics cards" have in common?

Unified shader architecture.

And what's significant about this?

It allows the GPU to programmed to use a consistent instruction set across all shader types (vertex, pixel and geometry shaders).

nVidia developed all GeForce 8 cards and later so that they don't have discrete vertex and pixel shaders (unlike the previous GeForce cards which had a fixed number of vertex and pixel "pipelines"), but to instead have flexible "stream processors" that can be programmed to perform either task depending on need, or indeed perform any task which requires a high throughput of data, such as processing physics calculations. They also added the geometry shader to implement new DX10 features.

The Physx software created by AGEIA was adapted for use on a GPU via nVidia's CUDA (software) and the Unified shader architecture (hardware).

Hope this helps

[ThEcLiT]

thx alot @chinobino.
So this part "or the GeForce GTX 200 series of cards that has the dedicated PhysX chipset to accelerate PhysX while gaming. " is somehow wrong.

[chinobino]

Originally Posted by ThEcLiT

thx alot @chinobino.
So this part "or the GeForce GTX 200 series of cards that has the dedicated PhysX chipset to accelerate PhysX while gaming. " is somehow wrong.

It's a bit misleading - as there is nothing that has been added to the "GeForce GTX 200 series of cards" specifically for Physx.

All nVidia did was increase the number of "processing cores" from the 8 series, which allows more simultaneous instructions to be run at once (i.e. the GTX280 has 240 "processing cores" as compared to the 8800GTX which had 128).

The next generation, GT300, will have an increased number of "processing cores" (allegedly 512), which will allow even more simultaneous instructions to be run at once .