Fabless semiconductor company Ageia has announced their plans to release PhysX, a dedicated physics processor designed to co-exist with existing GPU and CPU chips. With PhysX, games can go from having a few dozen physics objects to 30,000 to 40,000 of them. Gamers Depot talks why and how with Ageia CEO Manju Hegde and COO Curtis Davis and on GameSpot you can find a Q&A with Tim Sweeney, as Epic will be supporting the PhysX PPU.

GS: Can you give examples of how a game might be able to increase realism with the help of a PPU? TS: When people talk about physics in recent games, they mostly think of Unreal Tournament 2004's vehicles or Half Life 2's dynamic objects. There, you have tens or perhaps 100 big objects interacting physically in an otherwise static environment. Knocking chairs and tables around is fun, but that's hardly the apex of physics simulation! The next steps are realistic dynamic environments, fluid simulation, large-scale particle simulation, and other very large-scale physical phenomenon. If you look at a modern action or sci-fi movie, and what's possible with the non-realtime computer graphics effects there, it's clear that major new physics innovations will be introduced into gaming as hardware performance increases 10X, 100X, and more.