NVidia Considering Porting PhysX To OpenCL 54
arcticstoat writes "NVidia has revealed that it's considering porting its PhysX API to OpenCL to allow PhysX GPU-acceleration on competitors' graphics cards as well. At the moment, a GPU needs to support NVidia's CUDA technology in order to accelerate PhysX on the GPU, and ATI has so far declined NVidia's offer to get CUDA working on ATI GPUs. NVidia's director of product management for PhysX, Nadeem Mohammad, said, 'In the future it's a possibility that we could use OpenCL' for PhysX, adding, 'If we start using OpenCL, then there's a chance that the features would work on ATI, but I have no idea what the performance would be like.'"
Theory versus Practice (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenCL is low leve enough that it's certainly possible to write code that works on other hardware in theory while being far too slow to do anything useful in practice.
Knowing NV, I wouldn't be surprised to see this happening
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But then we get to the politics of the whole thing, and it's kind of depressing. Apple sends it to the Khronos group, which makes it a standard
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(oh wait, now I see it: Those letters I just wrote are so pretty being slightly 3D popping out of the screen by about 1 pixel...Yay!)
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No, it's ok as long as you fill up the gpu with processing chores so there isn't much left for painting pixels.
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It'll be about 20% off the Apple retail price and you get all the latest developer goodies.
I'm from the Federal Brazilian Banana Republic you insensitive clod. Even a macbook air [fnac.com.br] costs more than USD4.300. [google.com] Laugh it up, my friends!
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Does anyone knows how opencl is supposed to work in windows or linux?
In the exact same way that it'll work on Mac.
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Re:Theory versus Practice (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenCL is low leve enough that it's certainly possible to write code that works on other hardware in theory while being far too slow to do anything useful in practice.
Well if NVidia makes a sub-par implementation for competing cards, then NVidia can concentrate their efforts a cross-platform solution, while the competitor's cards are perceived as sub par. NVidia ever gets asked why they didn't do a better implementation, they could then argue this was just a token gesture and not an all out effort. In the meantime OpenCL gets picked up by games developers and NVidia gets a lead while the competition realises they have some catching up to do.
This is sneaky, but the competitors only have themselves to blame if they don't recognise where things are going.
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While they could do that, any kind of significant deviation in performance that's not due to hardware differences is just going to drive developers away. PhysX is only of value to NVIDIA if developers use it, otherwise if they all flock to Havok (which is getting its own OpenCL implementation) then being able to run PhysX quickly isn't going to be of any real benefit to NVIDIA.
NVIDIA can't play games with OpenCL and PhysX, not at this stage at least.
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It's not clear to me that any other outcome is possible, really, since Intel demanded that OpenCL not include any features that couldn't be implemented on Intel integrated GPUs. That makes it basically a lowest-common-denominator spec that's missing support for a lot of the sort of stuff you can do in CUDA.
OpenCL? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OpenCL? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks! - I first thought that it was a misspelling of OpenGL.
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Re:Competition is good.. for us (Score:5, Insightful)
While competition may sound nice, for game developers (of which I am one) and gamers alike, in the end the goal is to be able to make or play a game without having to consider a zillion different rendering/physics/sound APIs, including the many limitations only supporting one of them may bring with it. We should be grateful that we are now left with 2 rendering APIs (OGL and D3D) which all cards (more or less) support. Let's hope that the same thing happens for physics really soon. It seems that nVidia is at least attempting to make this happen, which is encouraging.
Re:Competition is good.. for us (Score:5, Funny)
Here you go!
(excuse me if there are some errors, I didn't use opengl or c++ in over four years)
DON'T CLICK PARENT LINK (Score:2)
You might now wanna click parent link
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nVidia is the graphics card vendor that hasn't abandoned their proprietary GPGPU framework in favor of the open standard yet. Sure, they are including support for OpenCL, but that strikes me as very similar to the way Microsoft makes it possible to use OpenGL, but does everything they can to get people to use DirectX.
nVidia is still trying get CUDA into a dominant position in the market, but they don't seem to realize that CUDA's position is much less tenable than Direct3D's position vs. OpenGL. nVidia isn'
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NVIDIA's still pushing CUDA 'cause they can evolve the standard much faster than OpenCL or DirectX compute. Since they control it they can directly expose additional general computing features as they add them to their GPU's instead of waiting for a committee bless it, or Microsoft to incorporate it into DirectX.
This is very similar to how Microsoft was able to eventually get DirectX ahead of OpenGL when it came to base spec features. They didn't need ARB buy in to add new feature to the base spec and so co
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That's because there are no OpenCL implementations, and the spec was only released last December.
Re:Competition is good.. for us (Score:5, Informative)
Really, the OpenGl working group does everything they can to get people to use DirectX. If they would be more nimble in adding new features to the spec things would be a different place. Instead, they move along at a glacial pace and the standard method of spec evolution goes something like this:
* Microsoft announces DirectX n with new features XYZ
* nVidia and ATi release cards that support DirectX n
* A few years later game developers release games that support DirectX n. Some game developers, like iD, work with ATi and nVidia to get OpenGL extensions running on hardware from both IHVs that support the features of DirectX n
* A few years later the OpenGL working group ratifies OpenGL version++ that unifies support for the features of all of the various OpenGL extensions that have been written since the current OpenGL spec was ratified.
While Microsoft's method might be more autocratic than the OGL working group's method it does tend to get new features in the hands of ISVs and consumers more quickly. Plus, it's not like Microsoft dictates everything that goes in to a given DirectX release. They work with numerous ISVs and IHVs to find out what features are being requested.
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Wish I still had modpoints, as far as I am concerned you have hit the nail on the head.
Considering the direction of 3D hardware is now pretty much determined by meetings about DirectX specs between MS & ATI / MS & nVidia, the OpenGL might as well follow along closely.
Once they know it's going to appear in each manufacturer's silicon, what is the point in not supporting it ASAP.
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You're quite right. The OpenGL ARB makes Microsoft's job far too easy.
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Re:Competition is good.. for us (Score:4, Insightful)
OGL, D3D etc. are API's just like CUDA and OpenCL. Physics engines as you know are software kits available to game developers to implement in their titles. You should be happy that already the industry is not about to get into the API fight you mentioned. Instead they are readying their software to not only work on their hardware but competitors hardware as well using a common API. Lets all be grateful Nvidia isn't trying to shove CUDA down everyone's throat. With PhysX implemented in OpenCL everyone wins. Nvidia gets to sell more licenses due to their engine working on a wider variety of hardware and gamers don't have to be limited in their hardware selection.
Nvidia moving toward OpenCL is a very good thing. Much better than moving to DirectX 11 GPGPU which limits their software to MS platforms.
It would be a great thing (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess Nvidia would gain money through licensing and AMD/ATI...I don't know, do they stand to lose anything because of this?
Besides that, physx is available for the PS3 and (I believe) the Wii so it would be a (more or less) universal API for physics acceleration.
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Besides that, physx is available for the PS3 and (I believe) the Wii so it would be a (more or less) universal API for physics acceleration.
The Wii uses an ATI card. How could that be possible already?
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They don't have much choice (Score:2)
It's nice to see somebody doing the decent thing for once. Much better to put the thing out there and use it to sell some next-gen graphics cards instead of spending years trying to "win" via lock-in-and-lawyers.
If only people like the RIAA could see a similar light.
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It's nice to see somebody doing the decent thing for once. Much better to put the thing out there and use it to sell some next-gen graphics cards instead of spending years trying to "win" via lock-in-and-lawyers.
Agreed. nVidia has traditionally been a big supporter of open APIs. I remember back in 3dfx's hey-day, glide (3dfx's proprietary API) was all the rage...until nVidia entered the market and pushed OpenGL quite heavily.
Total hypocrits (Score:1, Insightful)
How about those fuckers at nvidia start by writing real open source drivers for their cards ?
xorg's nv is incredibly lame (doesn't even handle clock speed, because of "proprietary information"), and if you're not running one of those few systems that supports BINARY CLOSED SOURCE DRIVERS, you're totally out of luck.
First, they should play ball, then they can talk about writing standards.
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They didn't talk about writing standards. Even if they had, that would have no relevance to whether or not they produce open-source drivers.
Are you sure you know what "hypocrite" means?
In any case, they're under no obligation to cater to you or the other few people who are unable or unwilling to use closed source drivers.
Don't get me wrong; I'd love to see open-source nV drivers and think that they and AMD/ATI are making a huge mistake by essentially allowing Intel to dictate the development of the revamped
Brilliant (Score:1)
Step Two: Encourage Developers to program with Physx, Now that it works on both sides
Step Three: After universal acceptance of PhysX, include bugs that will only affect ATI owners, making ATI look bad.
Not saying that this *will* happen, but just that its a possibility.
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Step Four, get sued past the point of any potential returns from the actions outlined.
There are unfair competition/business laws present that could offer a halt to that sort of thing. This is a big part of what MS was busted for and even though the anti trust case was more or less a busted slap on the wrist, Sun did end up taking a sizable chunk of change from MS over the Java implementations that did exactly what you suggested and MS is currently restricted by the settlement over certain things it can do.
B
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Step Four: Frustrated by their games underperforming on half the systems in the world game developers migrate in mass to competing product leaving PhysX an ugly footnote and huge negative entry in NVidia's accounting sheets.