NVIDIA Launches New SLI Physics Technology

Thomas Hines writes "NVIDIA just launched a new SLI Physics technology. It offloads the physics processing from the CPU to the graphics card. According to the benchmark, it improves the frame rate by more than 10x. Certainly worth investing in SLI if it works."

"Physics"

[2.7182]

This is a little misleading. The hardware is really just fast at computing, not specifically designed for "physics". For example it doesn't have a build in ODE solver.

10x faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

10x faster? They might as well just say it's infinity times faster so that we know they are bullshitting from the second we read it...

Re:Hardware is not the only preformance answer

[heinousjay]

Yeah, I don't get these game programmers, always writing shitty bloated code any old Slashbot could best.

Re:You know what...

[Rei]

Your comment reminds me a bit of this article [uncyclopedia.org]. Concerning the reasons for the lack of success of the American Institute of Communist Studies' program for granting certificates certifying something that someone said is "communist":

"And lastly, for reasons unknown, the AICS decided that half of the advisory board would consist of Communists and half of Libertarians. Since Communists believe that practically no one is a Communist including each other; and Libertarians believe that just about everything is indicative of Communism including most extant forms of Capitalism, the board reached an impasse in about half a second. "

Microsoft to the rescue

[RxScram]

Don't worry! Microsoft will come to the rescue with DirectX 11... all you will have to do is write the physics engine using the DirectX API, and Microsoft's trusty software will interface with whichever hardware you have. Don't worry... it'll be bug free and secure, too!

Re:The PURE EVIL contained in modern graphics card

[Slashcrap]

This is due to modern PC video card architecture containing a large quantity of PURE EVIL. To get around this evil the X developers have done some rather expedient things, such as directly accessing the cards via IO registers, directly from userland.

It's worse than that - even if you dispense with a graphics card, your OS still has to directly access some of your hardware at some point. This creates the opportunity for all kinds of strange interactions and unforseen security holes.

Ever at the forefront of proactive security, the OpenBSD team have announced their solution to this problem. OpenBSD 4.0 will be the first OS to not run on any hardware at all. It will exist only as a mass of finely crafted and provably secure pseudo code. Although critics have pointed out that the finished product may lack something in the functionality stakes, supporters have pointed out that the OS has been moving in this direction for a while.

Project leader Theo offered the following comment, "Retards! You weren't supposed to install it anyway! Have you read the chapter on partitioning in the install guide? Do you really think we wrote it like that because we wanted people to try and install it? Jesus, you make me sick."

Re:Nice

[Thing 1]

late 1996 or early 1997 [...] Wow....it seems so long ago.

It's because we're getting closer to Advanced Technology #1.

Like in Civilization, the way olden times rush by quickly, but once you start getting closer and closer to modern times, it starts taking longer and longer and then it's 5:30 in the morning and you can only sleep a half hour before school?

Yeah, that's what technology's doing to all of us. ;-)

Re:I don't understand?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Well, at 4 frames per day, I could probably keep up with my buddies on an online shooter.....I might actually win a few rounds, with 6 hours between frames to think about what to do next.

Re:The PURE EVIL contained in modern graphics card

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't get it.

can you summarize?