Nvidia: PhysX Works on Apple's iPhone
While looking into implementations of PhysX, we spoke to Nvidia this week and discovered that Apple's iPhone fully supports PhysX.
While PhysX on Nvidia's own hardware is available only on GeForce 8 series GPUs and up, PhysX technicaly is able to work without an Nvidia GPU, provided that the necessary work is done of course, and the proper licenses are in place. For example, PhysX works on the PlayStation 3 using the the CPU and the SPU, which are both part of the Cell processor.
According to Nvidia: "PhysX is available on the iPhone--running on the ARM processor core. This versatility is what is driving PhysX adoption across multiple platforms including consoles and PCs," Nvidia told Tom's Hardware.
At the present time however, no official announcements have been made. While there are really neat 3D games on the iPhone, there are none out there that take advantage of PhysX. As far as we're aware, Apple does not have any publicly available documentation for PhysX development.
Unless you're running a 686 class processor, I don't think it's going to help much.
As for plugging you're iPhone in to handle PhysX, I'm afraid you're missing the point. This is a software based solution and is not hardware based like on the Geforce 8, 9, and 200 cards. This is basically a PhysX middleware, or API, written for the iPhone so app and game designers can easily include PhysX instructions in their programs. This is actually very smart of NVIDIA since Intel is not only being docile with their acquired Havok physics technology, but will more than likely only target Havok towards Intel processor markets. By getting an early start with ARM processors through the iPhone NVIDIA is really solidifying PhysX as THE physics API to use.
"PhysX is available on the iPhone--running on the ARM processor core. This versatility is what is driving PhysX adoption across multiple platforms including consoles and PCs,"
Is ths kind of double posting?..;)
Just kidding... but yes.. it is true that this news has been included in the previous news by another author. This one just provide a little bite more detail...
FYI
What are you talking about? The iPhone hardware is more powerful than the PSP, never mind the DS.
And about PhysX running on iPhone, that isn't too surprising as far as tech feats are concerned - I mean, you can install Linux on your battery-powered toothbrush nowadays.
If anything, this goes to show how far ahead Nvidia marketing is compared to ATI. You always hear PhysX in the news; what about Havok? Cuda gets much more media coverage compared to Stream. ATI seems to make one announcement per quarter and that's that. Nvidia marketing is far more proactive. I can see why Nvidia has the lion's share of the marketplace.
And yes, I own products from both camps, so no fanboyism here. I enjoy their products immensely. Just comparing their marketing departments and market share.
like
http://appshopper.com/games/big-fun-racing
or
http://appshopper.com/games/spacerace
or
http://appshopper.com/games/debris
I have an non-jailbreaking iphone 3G and some game is still crash from time to time and scrolling in game such as Sim City is slow. The PSP and DS can play all their game without being such a whiner. I know it's much powerful but as a dedicated gaming devices it's not that powerful. I have both the DS/PSP so I'm a living prof of my statement.
Result: 1-2 frames per second (256MB NVidia Quadro 1500M on HP NW9440 laptop).
Now they are trying to tell us that Physx will run on the iPhone? They may be 100% correct, because what nVidia are NOT telling us is that it will run like an absolute dog, and the procesing power required will probably zap your iPhone battery in 10-20 mins.