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Nvidia has announced that it plans to buy physics technology firm Ageia.
Ageia, founded in 2002, created the PhysX PPU hardware and software. Its physics tool is used in a number of games for the PS3, 360, and Wii. The firm says that there are over 10,000 registered users of its free SDK.
The GPU firm said it was acquiring the physics company as the technology was a good match for its business as the computing industry moves to wards "a heterogeneous computing model". PhysX will now be paired with Nvidia’s GeForce technology.
"The Ageia team is world class, and is passionate about the same thing we are – creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences," commented Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. "By combining the teams that created the world’s most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world.
"The computer industry is moving towards a heterogeneous computing model, combining a flexible CPU and a massively parallel processor like the GPU to perform computationally intensive applications like real-time computer graphics," Huang added.
"Nvidia’s CUDA technology, which is rapidly becoming the most pervasive parallel programming environment in history, broadens the parallel processing world to hundreds of applications desperate for a giant step in computational performance. Applications such as physics, computer vision, and video/image processing are enabled through CUDA and heterogeneous computing."
Manju Hegde, co-founder and CEO of Ageia, added: "Nvidia is the perfect fit for us. They have the world’s best parallel computing technology and are the thought leaders in GPUs and gaming. We are united by a common culture based on a passion for innovating and driving the consumer experience."
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Many in the industry speculated that Ageia was ripe for acquisition following Intel’s multi-million dollar swoop for physics tech rival Havok last year.
