[ODE] hardware physics chip

[Ed Jones]

I don't mean Open as in Open Source.

I mean Open as in "A common interface" - like OpenGL.

I don't think  OpenGL drivers are generally Open Source are they?
But you access the graphics acceleration the cards perform via a common API.


Erin Catto wrote:

>How about closed source? I didn't see anything open about this chip. Please
>tell me I'm wrong.
>
>Erin
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ode-bounces at q12.org [mailto:ode-bounces at q12.org] On Behalf Of Ed Jones
>Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:18 PM
>To: Jeffrey Smith
>Cc: ODE Mailing List (E-mail)
>Subject: Re: [ODE] hardware physics chip
>
>I imagine this would necessitate some form of "OpenP[hysics]L" or 
>"OpenD[ynamics]L" abstraction layer so that you can write your physics 
>code independent of the acceleration hardware being used?
>
>Isn't the biggest benefit of video acceleration that you can just chuck 
>a load of vertices and textures onto the card, leave them there, and 
>periodically tell the card where to draw them without having to pull and 
>push stuff back and forth across the bus? If you had a physics 
>accelerator you could send the whole scene definition to the card, but 
>then each simulation step you'd have to pull the positional data off 
>that card and squirt it at the graphics card. To get full benefit 
>wouldn't you need the physics accelerator on-board the graphics card?
>
>Sounds interesting though.
>
>Cheers,
>Ed.
>
>
>Jeffrey Smith wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Vrej Melkonian [mailto:vmelkon at yahoo.com] wrote:
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Is it possible to create a special chip for physics? It's not like 
>>>graphics that can really benefit from a specially designed chip.
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes it is possible, and yes physics can benefit from a specially designed
>>chip.  It is possible to parallelize much of the physics computation
>>required for medium-to-large scenes in addition to having specialized
>>hardware for extremely fast 4x4 matrix computations
>>
>>Limor Schweitzer <limor666 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Does anyone know if these guys base their stuff on ODE ?
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>They are using Novodex (www.novodex.com), which has been written by some
>>ex-MathEngine employees (among others), and thus shares some architectural
>>similarities with ODE.
>>
>>It's an extremely robust physics engine, you should check out the demos.
>>
>>-jeff
>>
>>
>>
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>>    
>>
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