Nvidia: PhysX Works on Apple's iPhone

By Tuan An Nguyen
published

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.

15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alvine
    it be cool to plug your iphone/itouch to your pc and let that work on physix while you game!
    Reply
  • warezme
    dude, you are so lame....
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    alvineit be cool to plug your iphone/itouch to your pc and let that work on physix while you game!Unless you're running a 686 class processor, I don't think it's going to help much.
    Reply
  • The Schnoz
    OOOh! PhysX on the iPhone. Big deal. I'm sure Crysis could work on iPhone too, although at low,low,low settings and with a horrible frame rate, but it could work.
    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.
    Reply
  • Master Exon
    Slow news day, eh?
    Reply
  • my_name_is_earl
    Nice to know. iphone has so much potential as a gaming device. What ever the DS can do the iphone can do too if only the phone has enough horsepower and "system" memory to support big game.
    Reply
  • Trialsking
    No x16 AA and x16 AF, no care.
    Reply
  • pharge
    hmmm.... I thought I saw this news posted here in "PS3 Gets Physical with Nvidia" already... and umm... they actually quat the same words...>_>
    "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
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    iPhone now physx enabled list of products that can use physx...
    Reply
  • crimsondynamics
    my_name_is_earlNice to know. iphone has so much potential as a gaming device. What ever the DS can do the iphone can do too if only the phone has enough horsepower and "system" memory to support big game.
    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.
    Reply