A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
Examples of calculations involving a PPU might include rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, collision detection, fluid dynamics, hair and clothing simulation, finite element analysis, and fracturing of objects.
The idea is having specialized processors offload time-consuming tasks from a computer's CPU, much like how a GPU performs graphics operations in the main CPU's place. The term was coined by Ageia to describe its PhysX chip. Several other technologies in the CPU-GPU spectrum have some features in common with it, although Ageia's product was the only complete one designed, marketed, supported, and placed within a system exclusively being a PPU.
An early academic PPU research project named SPARTA (Simulation of Physics on A Real-Time Architecture) was carried out at Penn State and University of Georgia. This was a simple FPGA based PPU that was limited to two dimensions. This project was extended into a considerably more advanced ASIC-based system named HELLAS.
February 2006 saw the release of the first dedicated PPU PhysX from Ageia (later merged into nVidia). The unit is most effective in accelerating particle systems, with only a small performance improvement measured for rigid body physics. The Ageia PPU is documented in depth in their US patent application #20050075849. Nvidia/Ageia no longer produces PPUs and hardware acceleration for physics processing, although it is now supported through some of their graphics processing units.
File:SPARTA animation.jpg|alt=Example SPARTA animation|Example SPARTA animation
File:SPARTA board.jpg|alt=SPARTA printed circuit board|SPARTA [[Printed circuit board]]
File:Hellas die.jpg|alt=Hellas die photo|Hellas [[Die (integrated circuit)|die]] photo
The first processor to be advertised being a PPU was named the PhysX chip, introduced by a fabless semiconductor company called AGEIA.
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A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film (). Their main uses are in video games (typically as middleware), in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite. Initially, video games supporting PhysX were meant to be accelerated by PhysX PPU (expansion cards designed by Ageia). However, after Ageia's acquisition by Nvidia, dedicated PhysX cards have been discontinued in favor of the API being run on CUDA-enabled GeForce GPUs. In both cases, hardware acceleration allowed for the offloading of physics calculations from the CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks instead.
Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calculated in software running on a generic CPU can also be calculated in custom-made hardware, or in some mix of both. To perform computing tasks more quickly (or better in some other way), generally one can invest time and money in improving the software, improving the hardware, or both.
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