AGEIA

Can you tell us about yourself and what you do at the company???

Manju Hegde, Founder and CEO of AGEIA
See Manju's bio on the AGEIA website

Why did you decide to come out with The PhysX accelerator board??

We were inspired by the Holodeck from Star Trek. And with PhysX technology, we are one step closer to that reality.

What does the end user benefit from having this card??

Games such as "Half Life 2" have been massively successful, and the software-based physics features, such as the rag doll effects, have been instrumental in that success. By providing a dedicated physics processing unit - actions can inspire realistic reactions, characters can interact in a life-like manner with the environment and that make each game more immersive, more thrilling.

Will you make you tech available to the big gaming card makers???

We plan to launch the PhysX processor first on a stand alone PCI add in card. We have already made public announcements about our partners Asus and BFG Technologies.

What other features will these cards have???

The PhysX processor will be equipped with 125 million transistors, 182sq nm in 130nm in TSMC, 128MB of GDDR3 memory and a 20 watts chip.

Will you support Linux???

Almost all PC games are Windows based and so we support primarily Windows. If there is enough demand from our customers we would consider a Linux port.

Will you see a difference when having this card installed in say a system like this:

AMD 1.4 gig cpu
512 ram
fx5700 256
sblive card
40gig hard drive

Yes.

GPUs are designed to process vertices and pixels and are not very good at handling the random data accesses required to traverse the spatial physics data structures. Plus, data dependencies choke GPU pipelines. As for CPUs, they offer small amounts of parallelism for general-purpose operations and do provide floating-point capabilities. But not even the highest-end multicore CPUs offer anywhere near the parallelism required for complex, interactive real-time physics. And even if they did, they are often fully booked just handling the game logic and artificial intelligence.

What kind of performance details or specs can you tell us???

The measurement of performance as well as the development of benchmarks for a new category such as the PhysX processor is challenging. We just announced our relationship with Future mark. Stay tuned for future announcements.

What are the different model specs???

We are offering only one configuration of the PhysX processing board. This product is designed to be a gaming platform that remains fairly consistent.

Will this aid in cinematic games IE help bringing these types of games around???

PhysX is used very heavily, non-real time in the movies. So yes, a higher level of cinematic realism will be open to PC games, in real-time.

Did you approach Epic or did they seek you out???

There was interest on both sides.

What does this card add to games with out your code in them???

Games must be designed to take advantage of the PhysX SDK.

What about Windows Longhorn and XP support????

The PhysX cards will run games that support the PhysX SDK regardless of the Operating System. (I am reaching here!)

Would this card aid in the 3d desktop of Longhorn???

The PhysX processor is not a graphics chip, no.

What about video support and the like???

The PhysX processor is independent of the graphics processor.

What resolution would your games have to be at to get the effects of this card???

The PhysX processor is independent of the graphics processor

Will this aid in PVR functions also(video display/capture??)???

No, the PhysX technology is a complement to the graphics processor. Not a replacement.

What other games makers have talked to you that you can tell us???

Unreal Partnership - Epic Games
Dragonshard - Atari
Ghost Recon 3 - Ubisoft
City of Villains - Cryptic
99 Nights - Phantagram
Atari Shiny top secret title TBA
Bet on Soldier - Kylotonn
Robohoard - Naked Sky
"Avalanche" Demo - Epic Games
"Rube Goldberg" Demo - Epic Games
"Drums" Demo - Epic Games
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends - Big Huge Games/Microsoft
Arena Online - Yager
Stoked Rider - Bongfish
Metathrone Project - PerfectPlay
Title TBA - Ritual Entertainment
Karma - Quantic Dream
Gungho Partnership - all titles, including Rondo Projects
Warhammer - Mythic (2007)
Also, please be sure to keep an eye out on the AGEIA News Page at www.ageia.com. We are continually adding partners.