[Beowulf] coprocessor to do "physics calculations"

[Geoff Jacobs]

Joe Landman wrote:
<snip>
> Likely it has a linearized version of an ODE solver.  Nothing
> spectacular.  Shouldn't be that hard to code a simple Runge-Kutta or
> even a Simpson's rule in hardware ...
Indeed, but it probably only accelerates specific functions in the Ageia
engine. Here is what the competition (Havoc, used in Half-Life 2 for
those familiar) does:
http://www.havok.com/content/view/17/30/

I suspect it's like original Geforce cards were - very much a fixed
function device.

> Likely it has "game physics" and the major question is how do game
> physics map against the real world physics.
It likely has a subset (that which needed accelerating) of the Ageia
physics engine. It is also likely not tuned for accuracy.

> Thats not the only reason ...  Dedicated hardware, well designed to the
> task, can absolutely wipe the floor with general purpose hardware.  GPU
> vs CPU is a great example of this.
> 

-- 
Geoffrey D. Jacobs
MORE CORE AVAILABLE, BUT NONE FOR YOU.

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