[ODE] Your thoughts on "Physics Accellerators"

[Nate W]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Benny Kramek wrote:

> Do you guys think it would be good idea to have special hardware that 
> can do dynamics calculations in hardware, like the was graphics cards to 
> graphics now?
> 
> Like, would it be a good idea to take something like ode and make it 
> into a computer board?

I think there's a lot of potential in that idea.  I could see a DPU
(dynamics processing unit) alongside the CPU and GPU in a high-end gamer's
machine, and probably other applications as well.  My guess is that the
"DPU" idea would work best if the processor was designed to work well with
a variety of dynamics software libraries though, not just ODE or just
Dynamechs or just any particular library.  

If a "DPU" did for dynamics what GPUs have done for graphics, we could be
simulating very complex worlds in real time, with hundreds or even
thousands of bodies and joints.  That would be too cool.

-- 

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com