ATI GPUs getting physical

Graphics manufacturer ATI today joined the growing hardware-accelerated physics movement by announcing that it was adding physics support to its CrossFire Radeon X1000 series GPUs for the upcoming Intel Core 2 Duo platform. The GPUs are expected to ship later this year.

Current games use the system CPU to calculate physics effects, but graphics and physics hardware manufacturers contend that many of those physics calculations are better suited to dedicated semiconductors like the GPU or a specialized physics-processing unit rather than the general CPU.

ATI will be working with physics middleware developer Havok to enable full support for Havok FX, a new effects-development platform that will take advantage of Shader Model 3.0 class GPUs to accelerate physics effects. ATI rival Nvidia announced earlier this year that it was also working with Havok to enable physics support on its GeForce 7 series of GPUs with Havok FX.

Physics-enabled CrossFire Intel Core 2 Duo systems will have three PCI Express expansion slots that can accept up to three Radeon cards, two for graphics and one for physics. Normal dual-card CrossFire configurations can dedicate one card to graphics and the second to physics.

Users can also mix and match Radeon cards for physics and graphics. For example, a two-card system could have a Radeon X1900 XTX for graphics and a Radeon X1600 for physics.

According to ATI, calculating physics on dedicated hardware will increase performance and allow for more complex environments filled with physical objects, all capable of interacting with one another. Traditional games can only handle tens of objects onscreen, but physics-accelerated games should handle hundreds, and eventually thousands, of objects enabling advanced fabric, fluid, and explosion effects, as well as mass-quantity rigid-body effects such as rock slides and avalanches.