NVIDIA and Havok Demonstrate World's First GPU-Powered Game Physics Solution at Game Developer's Conference

[Gstanfor]

NVIDIA and Havok Demonstrate World's First GPU-Powered Game Physics Solution at Game Developer's Conference

News Release

NVIDIA and Havok Demonstrate World's First GPU-Powered Game Physics Solution at Game Developer's Conference

NVIDIA(R) SLI(TM) Platform Supports Physics to Expand and Add Value to
Developers and Gamers

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, and Havok, the game industry's leading supplier of cross- platform middleware, will be demonstrating a physics effects solution that runs completely on a graphics processing unit (GPU) -- an industry first -- at this year's Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Jose, California (March 21st through 24th).

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020613/NVDALOGO )

The result of an ongoing engineering collaboration between Havok and NVIDIA, this new software product from Havok -- called Havok FX(TM) -- enables the simulation of dramatically-detailed physical phenomena in PC games, when powered by GPUs such as NVIDIA GeForce(R)7 or 6 Series GPUs and further amplified with NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU technology. The Havok FX product is currently in early release to select developers and is expected to be available this summer.

Through Havok FX, GPUs can simulate the interactions of thousands of colliding rigid bodies, a fundamental technique of physics computation seen in today's latest games. It's now possible to compute the components of friction, collisions, gravity, mass, and velocity that form the basis of rigid body physics. Havok FX is designed for GPUs supporting Shader Model 3.0, including the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 Series GPUs.

Utilizing Havok FX and NVIDIA graphics technology, game developers can now implement sophisticated physical phenomenon such as debris, smoke, and fluids that add immense detail and believability to game environments. Game designers can include advanced physics effects without burdening the CPU and slowing game-play, since the effects are simulated and rendered on the GPU.

Tyler Thompson, Technical Director of video game developer Flagship Studios states, "With Havok FX, we can explore new types of visual effects that add realism into Hellgate: London. Given the widespread installed base of GPUs and the incredible performance of the new NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX and GT GPUs, Havok FX was a natural choice."

"We are very excited about the quality and speed we are seeing on the NVIDIA GPUs. We've believed for some time that GPU technology had the potential to simulate physical effects and our collaboration with NVIDIA has proven that," says Jeff Yates, VP of Product Management at Havok. "The large installed base of Shader Model 3 class GPUs and momentum by NVIDIA in the market make Havok FX an attractive solution for game developers looking for hardware-accelerated physics."

"Moving physics processing to the GPU is a natural progression enabled by the high programmability in today's GPUs," said David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA. "By combining expertise with Havok, we have produced a fantastic solution for game developers that will lead to more compelling game-play and more realistic gaming experiences."

The award-winning NVIDIA GeForce 7 and GeForce 6 graphics architectures deliver advanced technologies including full support for Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) 9.0 Shader Model 3.0, enabling advanced shading programs for more realistic effects. By using the advanced programmable resources available in current GPUs, developers can harness the massive parallel computation capability of NVIDIA GPUs. The performance available to developers is further enhanced through NVIDIA SLI technology. This revolutionary platform innovation allows users to intelligently scale graphics performance by combining multiple NVIDIA graphics solutions in a single system with an NVIDIA nForce(R) SLI MCP.

About Havok

Havok is the gaming industry's leading independent provider of physics and character animation middleware. Top game developers and publishers worldwide such as Sony, EA, Microsoft Game Studios, Ubisoft, and Activision have licensed Havok products for use on over 150 titles including Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Age of Empires III, Marvel Nemesis, and Mercenaries. Havok enables game developers to create virtual worlds where players enter a dynamic, living and breathing universe with characters that interact in a completely natural and unscripted way. Havok's game specific solutions help developers achieve creative goals while reducing overall cost, time and risk associated with building today's leading games. Havok has offices in Dublin, Ireland and San Francisco.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The Company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, the benefits, performance, capabilities and features of NVIDIA GeForce 7 and GeForce 6 series GPUs and SLI technology, the collaboration between NVIDIA and Havok, availability of Havok FX, PC gamers' continued demand for realism, game developer's uses of the Havok FX and NVIDIA graphics technology, and the combination of NVIDIA and Havok technology, are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in PC gamers' preferences for quality and speed, lack of new PC games to use the new technology, delays in ramping new products into production, prohibitive pricing of new products and games, loss of performance when products are used together, development of new technologies, manufacturing defects, software bugs, general industry trends including cyclical trends in the semiconductor industry, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, and other risks detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 29, 2006. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

NOTE: Havok and Havok 3 are registered trademarks of Havok and Telekinesys Research Limited. All other products, company names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE NVIDIA Corporation
-0- 03/20/2006
/CONTACT: Brian Burke of NVIDIA Corporation, +1-512-401-4385, or
bburke@nvidia.com; or Kimberly Caulfield of Havok, +1-415-543-4620, ext. 239,
or kimberly.caulfield@havok.com/
/Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020613/NVDALOGO
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
/Web site: http://www.nvidia.com/
(NVDA)

CO: NVIDIA Corporation; Havok
ST: California, Ireland
IN: CPR CSE ENT HRD ECP GAM
SU: TDS PDT

JL-EB
-- SFM088 --
5060 03/20/2006 06:00 EST http://www.prnewswire.com

 

[dug777]

It is all grand statements and little detailed information (and you certainly didn't need to copy and paste the whole bloody document )...

Game designers can include advanced physics effects without burdening the CPU and slowing game-play, since the effects are simulated and rendered on the GPU.

I was chatting to Kris about this a few months ago, i can't see how it could work without compromising your FPS (as 6 & 7 series cards don't have any specific extra hardware for this, from what i gather it will run in the existing shader pipes). Most people suffer from far more of a GPU than CPU FPS limitation at the Res/eyecandy levels they play at in modern games, and unless they can magically get the GPU to perform these calculations in real time without impacting on the amount of 'normal' GPU throughput it will merely exacerbate the situation...

I would be interested to read some more on it, looking forward to an article that is rather more 'informative' shall we say

 

[Gstanfor]

Hey, it's only a press release after all. I'm sure Anandtech and other sites will do a writeup shortly and the document isn't that long...

I don't know the intricate details myself, but I imagine the software would utilize the vertex shaders more than the pixel shaders simply because the vertex shaders virtually sit idle compared to pixel shaders in most of todays games - developers focus on the "shiny" visible effects that the pixel shader offers, vertex shader advantages are not as immediately obvious so they get neglected.

Since physics affects objects interactions with the world and vertex shaders affect shape and position in the 3d world of objects, vertex shaders are the logical place for a physics processor to reside.

I'd imagine you could also make use of the pixel shaders when a game engine is doing tasks such as stencil shadow rendering, heavy texturing etc and the pixel shaders are sitting idle.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Hey, it's only a press release after all. I'm sure Anandtech and other sites will do a writeup shortly and the document isn't that long...

I don't know the intricate details myself, but I imagine the software would utilize the vertex shaders more than the pixel shaders simply because the vertex shaders virtually sit idle compared to pil shaders in most of todays games - developers focus on the "shiny" visible effects that the pixel shader offers, vertex shader advantages are not as immediately obvious so they get neglected.

I'd imagine you could also make use of the pixel shaders when a game engine is doing tasks such as stencil shadow rendering, heavy texturing etc and the pixel shaders are sitting idle.

interesting...that would mean that the x1900 cards would be extremely handy at that, with acres of vertex shader pipes essentially sitting twiddling their thumbs in even modern games...Kris was saying both nvidia & ati were well in on this havok stuff (although he thought nvidia would beat ati to the initial punch, & it looks like he was right...) and it would essentially killl the physx card idea...

 

[Gstanfor]

Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

 

[linkgoron]

So ATI=PWND again? I mean they were the ones that thought about it (or at least told the press about it first), I can't belive nVidia was first to this too.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

I was under the impression that the x1900s have considerably more vertex shading power (and pipes) than the 7-series cards?

 

[Gstanfor]

Ati's vertex pipes are faster than nVIDIA's for typical (simple) vertex shader tasks; they are also less capable (programmable) than nVIDIA's. They also get a LOT of cpu assistance that nVIDIA's don't require.

I'm willing to bet the programmability will be a deciding factor here.

 

[tuteja1986]

I am pretty sure ATI introduceing some method way before Nvidia back in late 2005. Also i am pretty sure again your wrong about ATI less capable programmable vertex shader task. ATI did alot work on R520 , it wasn't rehash GPU like the G70 was.

 

[Lonyo]

There's one way to get an idea:
Xbitlabs vertex shader tests on 7800GTX512 vs X1900XTX
Looks like the X1900XTX is likely to be on par with the 7900GTX for complex operations, since it beats the 7800GTX512 by a margin.

 

[Griswold]

Isnt ATI going the unified shader route with their next generation? And didnt nvidia already claim there is no need to have unified shaders for DX10 games yet? Wonder how that could affect such physics calculations on the GPU.

At any rate, buying into Ageia more and more seems to be a huge mistake. ATI and Nvidia will eat this cake, not Ageia.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Griswold
Isnt ATI going the unified shader route with their next generation? And didnt nvidia already claim there is no need to have unified shaders for DX10 games yet? Wonder how that could affect such physics calculations on the GPU.

At any rate, buying into Ageia more and more seems to be a huge mistake. ATI and Nvidia will eat this cake, not Ageia.

Nvidia did not claim that. Nvidia claims there is a substantial trade off when going to a unified shader platform.

 

[Cooler]

I really think ATI and nvidia are just doing this for FUD. My GPU can do This ect. I think Ageia will be the leader in this just from the fact it is a single decated card.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

you are right about ONE thing:

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
i don't know the intricate details myself

no kidding

ATi has stated - about a year ago - that r520 is capable of doing exactly what nVidia and Havok are doing [now] . . . i expect r580 and r600 to be even more adept.

 

[apoppin]

found one of the old articles . . . from November, '05

Havok to compete with AGEIA for physics

Today, however, most processors spend their time mostly idling - you're rarely ever pushing your hardware to its limits consistently. Thus Havok, a company that's well known to game developers, has announced that it has plans to do for you what AGEIA promises, but save you money and maximize your dollar spent at the same time. Indeed, Havok has confirmed with us that they are competing with AGEIA . . .

so with today's DX9 compliant GPUs, it's entirely possible for Havok FX to program a Radeon X1800 or GeForce 7800 GT (and beyond) on the fly, with specific physics processing instructions.

. . . Havok also pointed out to us that its Havok FX engine will allow a Shader Model 3.0 compliant GPU to accelerate "game-play" physics and not only the resulting visual effects of such physics, which Havok says, AGIEA's product only does. Havok explains that its engine is able to offload such physics operations as collision detection, which on today's general purpose GPUs are very slow to compute. We spoke to Havok and they said:

"It is definitely the case that load-balancing is a key challenge for both effects physics and graphics. Enabling effects physics via the GPU offers much greater flexibility for addressing that type of problem versus a proprietary physics hardware device that will inevitably sit idle while the GPU may be overtaxed. We believe that two GPU's stand a far better chance of collaborating more effectively."

so they partnered with nVidia . . .they "like" sli.

expect "something" from ATi

personally i think Aegia doesn't have a chance [unless they partner with M$ or maybe even ATi]

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

you are right about ONE thing:

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
i don't know the intricate details myself

no kidding

ATi has stated - about a year ago - that r520 is capable of doing exactly what nVidia and Havok are doing [now] . . . i expect r580 and r600 to be even more adept.

Be that as it may, nVIDIA and Havok are first to actually present a solution, and all I'm hearing from the fanATics is sour grapes (predictably).

One wonders why we didn't see this vaunted ATi physics engine a year ago if it is no great probelm... Actions speak louder than words to me.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

you are right about ONE thing:

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
i don't know the intricate details myself

no kidding

ATi has stated - about a year ago - that r520 is capable of doing exactly what nVidia and Havok are doing [now] . . . i expect r580 and r600 to be even more adept.

Be that as it may, nVIDIA and Havok are first to actually present a solution, and all I'm hearing from the fanATics is sour grapes (predictably).

One wonders why we didn't see this vaunted ATi physics engine a year ago if it is no great probelm... Actions speak louder than words to me.

what sour grapes? . . .

i believe both M$, Aegia and ATi are also working on it . . . nVidia just partnered with Havok to reach the market first . . .

the first to market does not necessarily have the best solution.

and we need GAMES to support this . . . it's gonna take quite awhile.

 

[Gstanfor]

the first to market does not necessarily have the best solution. ... and we need GAMES to support this . . . it's gonna take quite awhile.

I wouldn't be *too* sure of that, myself - Tell me, what's the ratio of Havok enabled games featuring physics to other physics engines?

All nVIDIA/Havok need to do is ensure backward compatability with the current Havok games and they are already winning by a country mile IMO...

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

you are right about ONE thing:

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
i don't know the intricate details myself

no kidding

ATi has stated - about a year ago - that r520 is capable of doing exactly what nVidia and Havok are doing [now] . . . i expect r580 and r600 to be even more adept.

Be that as it may, nVIDIA and Havok are first to actually present a solution, and all I'm hearing from the fanATics is sour grapes (predictably).

One wonders why we didn't see this vaunted ATi physics engine a year ago if it is no great probelm... Actions speak louder than words to me.

what sour grapes? . . .

i believe both M$, Aegia and ATi are also working on it . . . nVidia just partnered with Havok to reach the market first . . .

the first to market does not necessarily have the best solution.

and we need GAMES to support this . . . it's gonna take quite awhile.

And most of know that your Nvidia fanboy :! look at sig and your post and i swear people will say you have something to do with Nvidia.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

the first to market does not necessarily have the best solution. ... and we need GAMES to support this . . . it's gonna take quite awhile.

I wouldn't be *too* sure of that, myself - Tell me, what's the ratio of Havok enabled games featuring physics to other physics engines?

All nVIDIA/Havok need to do is ensure backward compatability with the current Havok games and they are already winning by a country mile IMO...

take off the green glasses . . . and you may actually learn something.



and i am done discussing with you . . . here . . . there is NO point . . . in speculating - now

We'll SEE . . . don't count out M$, Aegia or ATi . . . their engineers are at least as competitent as nVidias

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Not wanting to rain on Ati's parade too much, but I think nVIDIA's vastly more capable vertex shaders will give a big advantage over ATi here. ATi has yet to learn that skimping on vertex shader capabilities is a bad thing.

you are right about ONE thing:

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
i don't know the intricate details myself

no kidding

ATi has stated - about a year ago - that r520 is capable of doing exactly what nVidia and Havok are doing [now] . . . i expect r580 and r600 to be even more adept.

Be that as it may, nVIDIA and Havok are first to actually present a solution, and all I'm hearing from the fanATics is sour grapes (predictably).

One wonders why we didn't see this vaunted ATi physics engine a year ago if it is no great probelm... Actions speak louder than words to me.

what sour grapes? . . .

i believe both M$, Aegia and ATi are also working on it . . . nVidia just partnered with Havok to reach the market first . . .

the first to market does not necessarily have the best solution.

and we need GAMES to support this . . . it's gonna take quite awhile.

And most of know that your Nvidia fanboy :! look at sig and your post and i swear people will say you have something to do with Nvidia.

Couldn't have said it better. However, you may want to take off your rose tinted glasses before referring to peoples sigs and which company they "support".

The way I see it, having Physics being done by the GPU could result in single card users dropping the resolution/quality in order for the gaim to remain fluidly playable. It's less of an issue with SLI or Crossfire. I do however think it's about time something was done about Physics considering how much the CPU is becoming a bottleneck in some situations.

 

[Gstanfor]

Appopin, you don't seriously believe that just because nVIDIA support Havok they are suddenly incapable of supporting any other physics API do you? Ever heard of Direct3D and OpenGL? Two different API's that work just fine on the same hardware...

 

[DaveBaumann]

http://www.havok.com/content/view/187/77/

Havok are targetting SM3.0 implementations because of the cross-platform benefits - PC NVIDIA/ATI, PS3 and XBOX 360. There's are greater math capability in all pixel pipelines so its actually more likely to use pixel shader than vertex shaders, with the geometry being deformed via render to vertex buffer like operations. It'll work both as a rendering pass in a frame, allowing for single graphics operation, or it can work by shuttling the ops off to a second board with the first doing the graphics rendering.

Edit: As explained by the Havok FAQ, this is not an "automatic" process accelerating current Havok implementations. This is a separate module for Havok, that is an additional cost over the rest of the Havok Middleware.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Appopin, you don't seriously believe that just because nVIDIA support Havok they are suddenly incapable of supporting any other physics API do you? Ever heard of Direct3D and OpenGL? Two different API's that work just fine on the same hardware...

where did you get that?
:Q

not from what i typed

otoh, just 'cause nVidia is "first" doesn't mean it is the best or only solution . . . M$, Aegia and ATi's engineers are clearly just as capable as nVidia's.

and i am DONE here . . . it's pure speculation - at this point
:roll:

and are you EVER gonnna get my 'nick' spelled right?
["apoppin" as in hell's a'poppin]

 

[imported_Finny]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Appopin, you don't seriously believe that just because nVIDIA support Havok they are suddenly incapable of supporting any other physics API do you? Ever heard of Direct3D and OpenGL? Two different API's that work just fine on the same hardware...

where did you get that?
:Q

not from what i typed

otoh, just 'cause nVidia is "first" doesn't mean it is the best or only solution . . . M$, Aegia and ATi's engineers are clearly just as capable as nVidia's.

and i am DONE here . . . it's pure speculation - at this point
:roll:

and are you EVER gonnna get my 'nick' spelled right?
["apoppin" as in hell's a'poppin]

Good lord, do you ever give credit where it's due? I'm not trying to sound like some nVidia fanboy, but from what I've seen, you can never give them praise for a single damn thing they do! The way I see it, it's a good idea, and all you have to say is "Just 'cause they're first doesn't mean they're best!" At least they're saying that they're doing something, regardless of what ATi has done (Or yet to have done). Hell, this should help push ATi to put something out sooner so we can hopefully eliminate the need for those stupid PPU cards in the future!

I'm all for whatever nVidia & Havok are doing, and hope that ATi will follow suit somehow (Whether with Ageia or whoever). As far as I'm concerned, it's a step in the right direction regardless.