Nvidia to buy Ageia

Posted at: 10:45am 5th February 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Promises GeForce-accelerated PhysX, but the company may well share its technology by making a free, non-proprietary physics API too

Now that Nvidia's previous physics pal Havok has been bought by Intel, the graphics giant has decided to buy the other major physics company; Ageia. In a statement, the graphics company said it had 'signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ageia Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology.'

Nvidia's president, Jen-Hsun Huang, said that 'the Ageia team is world class, and is passionate about the same thing we are-creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences. By combining the teams that created the world's most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world.'

Meanwhile, Ageia's CEO and co-founder, Manju Hedge, said that 'Nvidia is the perfect fit for us. They have the world's best parallel computing technology and are the thought leaders in GPUs and gaming. We are united by a common culture based on a passion for innovating and driving the consumer experience.'

Talks between Havok and Nvidia and AMD apparently broke down after the company was bought by Intel, with AMD's head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, saying that 'their helpfulness has largely vanished now that they've been bought by Intel.' Nvidia's vice president of content relations, Roy Taylor concurred when we spoke to him in December last year, saying 'I agree with Richard that, although I don't want to say anything negative about Intel - we're very cosy with them - he's right in as much as we need a non-proprietary, free API. We do - we need one.'

What's interesting, though, is that Taylor was talking a lot about the principle of having a non-proprietary, free API, as opposed to an exclusive Nvidia physics API. Let's face it; this is what you'd need if you wanted game developers to take your API seriously over Intel's. 'The industry is crying out for a non-proprietary physics API, and there isn't one today,' Taylor told Custom PC, 'Havok is no longer non-proprietary.'

So how could Nvidia go about this? 'Well, the perfect thing would be DirectPhysics,' says Taylor, 'If that was out right now, it would be fantastic. When I meet developers, that's what they all want. They want a non-proprietary, free API to write physics.'

The idea is that the API could be accelerated by either a CPU or a GPU, and Taylor says that this decision 'should be settled by the developers.' However, he did say that 'we think the GPU stands by itself as the best piece of hardware to accelerate physics, and we think that should be selectable, but each individual developer should decide which way they want to go. We want the world to have it, developers want to start doing it for sure - we've just got to work out the right way forward.'