NVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA Technologies

[JacKz5o]

NVIDIA, the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and Gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK.


"The AGEIA team is world class, and is passionate about the same thing we are—creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences," stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. "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."

"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," said Manju Hegde, co-founder and CEO of AGEIA.

Like graphics, physics processing is made up of millions of parallel computations. The NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT GPU, with its 112 processors, can process parallel applications up to two orders of magnitude faster than a dual or quad-core CPU.

"The computer industry is moving towards a heterogeneous computing model, combining a flexible CPU and a massively parallel processor like the GPU to perform computationally intensive applications like real-time computer graphics," continued Mr. Huang. "NVIDIA's CUDA technology, which is rapidly becoming the most pervasive parallel programming environment in history, broadens the parallel processing world to hundreds of applications desperate for a giant step in computational performance. Applications such as physics, computer vision, and video/image processing are enabled through CUDA and heterogeneous computing."

AGEIA was founded in 2002 and has offices in Santa Clara, CA; St. Louis, MO; Zurich, Switzerland; and Beijing, China.

The acquisition remains subject to customary closing conditions.

More details about the acquisition will be provided during NVIDIA's quarterly conference call, to be held on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Pacific Time. The Company's prepared remarks will be followed by a question and answer period, which will be limited to questions from financial analysts and institutional investors. To listen to the conference call, please dial 212-231-2901; no password is required. The conference call will also be webcast live (listen-only mode) at the following Web sites: www.nvidia.com and www.streetevents.com.

Replay of the conference call will be available via telephone by calling 800-633-8284 (or 402-977-9140), passcode 21354792, until February 20, 2008. The webcast will be recorded and available for replay until the company's conference call to discuss its financial results for its first quarter, fiscal 2009.

About AGEIA
AGEIA Technologies, Inc., is the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and Gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK. AGEIA is also credited with developing the world's first dedicated hardware physics processor, the AGEIA PhysX processor. The company, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., is privately-held. For more information visit http://www.ageia.com.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.

Source: NVIDIA

[OrbitzXT]

Someone posted this earlier, though your posts gives a lot more details!

[ktr]

Great news, hopefully with nvidia, they will be able to implement in more products, and drop cost down.

[Triprift]

They need to do something with it as there arnt many games that support it and reviews aint be favorable.

[EastCoasthandle]

There is also good conversation about it here

[mab1376]

maybe now well see sli with pci-e physx instead of tri sli?

[effmaster]

Originally Posted by mab1376

maybe now well see sli with pci-e physx instead of tri sli?

There is still alot to be done with this though if this were to happen

[jaystein]

nVIDIA is NOT the inventor of the GPU. The dude who wrote that article is High, High, High. Lay off the crack buddy.

[GLD]

I think they bought it to do as they did with Uli. Buy out the competition to effectively eliminate the competition.

Haven't they (nVidia) said that they were going to build theirs gpu's to run physics anyways? Which would have made physics cards unnecessary.

I guess if you can't beat them, buy them.

[spacejunky]

Originally Posted by GLD

I think they bought it to do as they did with Uli. Buy out the competition to effectively eliminate the competition.

Haven't they (nVidia) said that they were going to build theirs gpu's to run physics anyways? Which would have made physics cards unnecessary.

I guess if you can't beat them, buy them.

They probably bought them for their IP. Didn't want to pay them royalties plus now they get to charge their competitors royalties if they want to integrate.

I'd like to see a physics card integrated on the next NVIDIA chipset so you don't have to give up any slots for it.

[imperialreign]

I get the feeling we'll see the Physics Wars flare back up again

[Dangle]

I thought AMD/ATI was going to acquire this.

[snuif09]

this really sucks for us ATI people now we can never win the card batlle because of those stupid agreements

[Batou1986]

i have a felling this is a good move for progression of games as nvidia has a lot of push with developers

[15th Warlock]

Originally Posted by jaystein

nVIDIA is NOT the inventor of the GPU. The dude who wrote that article is High, High, High. Lay off the crack buddy.

Debatable, they coined the term GPU for the first time.

When nVidia released the GeForce 256 back in 1999, they named it the "world's first Graphic Processing Unit" (GPU)

GeForce 256 The World's First GPU

August 31, 1999 marked the introduction of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for the PC industry—the NVIDIA GeForce 256. The technical definition of a GPU is "a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second."

Source

Ati's PR department on the other hand came up with the term VPU (Video Processing Unit) some time afterwards with their Radeon cards.

So, as you can see, nVidia indeed invented the acronym GPU.

Back to topic, it's been rumored from a long time that Ageia has been working on a new PPU, so this means nVidia will kill this new PPU and somehow implement Ageia's PhysX on their triple SLI setups, or will they green light this PPU and release it as an nVidia board?

[btarunr]

It's less about PhysX, more about fortifying the GeForce brand, so the GPU does the physics calculations, and could end up running slower with the graphics. ATI is pure graphics, nothing else.

[15th Warlock]

Originally Posted by btarunr

It's less about PhysX, more about fortifying the GeForce brand, so the GPU does the physics calculations, and could end up running slower with the graphics. ATI is pure graphics, nothing else.

As you may see that is not entirely true either:

ATI CrossFire™ and Physics

ATI brings a whole new world of gaming with the introduction of physics processing on the ATI GPU as part of the ATI CrossFire platform. Now, in addition to dual-card CrossFire™ graphics, a third ATI Radeon™ X1000 series card can be used to deliver the most powerful physics processing performance available for the most true-to-life representations of reality possible. This potent new combination of the highest quality dual graphics solution with incredible physics processing capacity brings gamers the best looking, most immersive game experience possible, on the highest performing PC platform ever conceived, ATI CrossFire.

Source

Both companies are into GPU or VPU accelerated physics simulations.

[btarunr]

Graphics by ATI cards is shelved, just like how the so called NVidia Quantum Physics that added to the pretty specifications list of the GeForce 8 series earlier. If you look closely, that's a pretty old news from the former ATI website. The cards you see in the pictures are circa X1900 series and came before the ATI/AMD merger.

After Havoc announced it wouldn't optimise its API for GPU based computation, both NVidia and ATI were left in the cold until this NVidia-Ageia takeover.

Intel acquired Havok and plans to make Graphic cards!
AMD acquired ATI!
So it’s a logical decision from Nvidia to acquire Ageia to compete whit Intel in the future!
10Years from now Intel would make some very strong CPUs and GPUs with physics to, I'm sure!

[Darksaber]

Originally Posted by jaystein

nVIDIA is NOT the inventor of the GPU. The dude who wrote that article is High, High, High. Lay off the crack buddy.

jaystein, welcome to TPU, but please keep it civil. 1. This is a PRESS RELEASE. Which means we get these from the companies directly. 2. Even if this news were written by JackSo, a comment like this will not go well with neither the mods, nor our news posters.

cheers
DS

Originally Posted by Dangle

I thought AMD/ATI was going to acquire this.

lol AMD/ATI/AEGIA the AAA of computing.... that woulda been fun...

I'm so baked.

[candle_86]

Originally Posted by jaystein

nVIDIA is NOT the inventor of the GPU. The dude who wrote that article is High, High, High. Lay off the crack buddy.

actully they did, they created the term in 1999, the NV10 the worlds first GPU. Read a preview of the Geforce256 and you will understand. It was the NV10 that finally took the final load from the CPU, untill that point transform and lighting where CPU based with NV10 and DX7 it moved to the Video Card which became the GPU. So yes they built the worlds first. Now if they said the first 3d Accelorator they'd be wrong.

[Aeon19]

This is the end, beautyful friend. This is the end, my only friend...the end (For AMD-ATi and my fanboysm...)

[von kain]

they try to hit amd/ati which have allready intergrade physics in the gpu??

[mandis]

Originally Posted by von kain

they try to hit amd/ati which have allready intergrade physics in the gpu??

Mandis the world renowned inventor of the VPA (Video Processing Adaptor ...acronym) agrees

Computers had GPUs since the 80s or even earlier than that. How could somebody be so lame as to claim they INVENTED the GPU?

On topic, Nvidia is trying to steal some of AMD/ATIs shine at the moment. They can see how the 3870x2 is outperforming their current lineup of "VPAs" and are using hard PR tactics in order to keep their fans and investors happy. There is nothing wrong with that. And the consumer is bound to gain an overall better experience from future NVIDIA "VPAs".

Maybe the time has finally come for me to upgrade my trusty 7800GTXs? Lets wait and see...