ATI delays physics functions

GRAPHICS CARD outfit ATI has decided to postpone rolling out physics software into its cards for at least nine months.

Many have been waiting for ATI's answer to the Ageia's PhysX card especially after the company had been showing off a method of using native physics processing on its cards at Computex.

This method involved coupling several Radeon cards together and using the combined processing power to calculate all the physics formulas needed. RD600 based cards already support the idea, although they are probably going to be phased out next year.

Ageia sniffed that the method was crude and didn't actually answer the needs of real physics processing.

It could well be that ATi is try ing a-wait-and-see approach. The PhysX card is not yet doing particularly well mostly because it doesn't have too many games developers on board. While many expect interest in physics cards to pick up, it might take a year or two. µ

L'Inq
dailytech