Evening Reading

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  wow. that is, quite simply, fucking retarded if true. informative post monsieur Chryx. : PlanetPerfecto
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    yep :( ffs, x87 AND single threaded? I'm surprised Nvidia haven't figured out that what they're act... : Toraz Chryx
    • it's a classic issue with corporate bottom-line mentality. i doubt it will ever go away. im sure plenty o... : PlanetPerfecto
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  Ouch. Way to hamstring adoption by trying to sell a few more GPUs. : DinK
  • And without adoption, PhysX just disappears. You have to get your product out there before you can use it... : Robotic Puppy Eater
• Lol so there's really no reason for anyone to bother using PhysX at this point. nVidia is intentionally f... : Robotic Puppy Eater
• It's long been speculated, nice to see someone call them on it. : Visceral Monkey
• jesus christ, there must be a lawsuit in there somewhere : filthysock
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  It always was a farce. I wonder how valcan_s is going with his dedicated 470 nvidia card just for physx? : abrasion
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    Sounds like the software version was a farce to make the hardware solution more appealing or impressive. ... : DinK
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      Yeah, it's killing widespread support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physx#Title_support : daVinci1980
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        What percentage of games is this over how long a time period? How many of these games do anything signif... : DinK
        • this. there's basically no game that needs it. Lack of PhysX is not going to stop me from getting a ch... : MamiyaOtaru
  • I hear Sniper: Ghost Warrior looks ****AWESOME**** on it. : chrisschutz
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  None of you are programmers, and it's ridiculously obvious. Writing code that uses SSE instructions re... : daVinci1980
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    But don't all CPUs capable of running games utilizing PhysX have at least SSE1 support? Maybe SSE2? : Prozium
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      Minimum specification is an application decision, not a middleware decision. : daVinci1980
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        I don't think anything that can actually run nvidias drivers can be run on a CPU that doesn't have SSE su... : bostrov
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          It doesn't matter, it's not a decision middleware providers can make for all application providers. To... : daVinci1980
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            can't Nvidia just change their middleware spec? Just basically say, if you want to use our PhysX tech you... : Prozium
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              Sure, they could. But most middleware vendors target the least common denominator. Increasing the min spe... : daVinci1980
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                So they would essentially lose what, zero developers? Is there anyone out there still developing physics ... : Prozium
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                  Blizzard has amazingly low system requirements on all of their titles. UnrealEngine3 has amazingly low sy... : daVinci1980
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                    Is there a reason, like I suggested below, that they couldn't just leave the current version in there as ... : DinK
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                      Ah, now we get into a tricky deployment question. How are these backends loaded? Calling across DLL bound... : daVinci1980
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                        Anything using modern OpenGL extensions is calling across a DLL boundary at an even higher frequency than... : ThereCanBeOnlyOneCat
                        • That's true for Direct3D as well, but still not a reason to add an extra few thousand or hundred thousand... : daVinci1980
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    i thought the intel compiler gave you switches for using SSE and being compatible with other cpus : filthysock
    • It isn't quite that easy. Back when I was regularly using the intel compiler the only thing it would auto... : bostrov
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      PhysX is distributed to developers as mostly closed source, black box libraries. They are compiled agains... : daVinci1980
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        I think he means that nvidias themselves should be able to vectorize physx via compiler switched with lit... : bostrov
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          It's not little difficulty. The fastpath on the CPU doesn't look like the fastpath on the gpu. They're co... : daVinci1980
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            I have written (while employed at intel) a number of physics libraries and various other code with x87, s... : bostrov
            • It's just another path that costs time, money and resources that could be better spent where customer dem... : daVinci1980
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        http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7t5yh4fd.aspx : filthysock
        • Automatic compiler switches do nothing to address the other issues I brought up. : daVinci1980
  • I suspect the code is already pretty close to the way it needs to be for SSE support and it does seem lik... : bostrov
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    The guy who knows enough about this to have discovered it in the first place sure seems to think there ar... : DinK
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      He's also enough of a fucktard to think that using vtune makes him Woodward and Bernstein. The fact i : uncleanmonkey
      • Yeah, I don't think it's strange or surprising at all. There's the desire to sell GPUs but consoles are ... : DinK
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      I see, he's able to make a cost judgement based on his extensive work of looking through the proprietary ... : daVinci1980
      • When I said the guy quotes nvidia, I should have included "on his own site" which is linked in the articl... : DinK
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    This might hold water if SSE was not supported by every chip manufactured since the Athlon XP. And there... : qsylvr
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      http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=23409484 : daVinci1980
      • That seems like a reason to leave the current version available as a fall-back, not a reason to avoid doi... : DinK
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      If it was just a compiler switch then developers, who have source licenses, would just enable it and the ... : uncleanmonkey
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        according mr davinci they are distributed pre-compiled : filthysock
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          Almost all middleware comes with a source license, although you can be limited in what you're allowed to ... : uncleanmonkey
          • I doubt the hardware abstraction/driver layer of physx is distributed to middleware licensees? : Toraz Chryx
        • Source licenses are granted to specific partners on a case-by-case basis. Some developers get source, mos... : daVinci1980
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    This is just silly, compiler intrinsics are not hard. : Satyric0n
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      And are not at all sufficient. If it was as easy as 'turn on this compiler switch', it'd be done. : daVinci1980
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        Intrinsics aren't a compiler switch, they're simulated functions that serve as an alternative to handwrit... : Satyric0n
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          They're not. They don't address the fallback path, they don't address providing multiple SSE backends, an... : daVinci1980
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            They do address ease of development, which means there's basically no excuse for not providing an SSE pat... : Satyric0n
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              Except for all of the reasons I've already outlined. But other than those, you're totally right. No reaso... : daVinci1980
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                Your reasons are specious. You make it sound like one hobbiest developer that has to do the work. It's fu... : Satyric0n
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                  Your argument is right up there with the "WoW makes $150M / mo, why isn't everything perfect?" Everything... : daVinci1980
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                    Except that I am a programmer (native HPC code, native, i.e. actually comparable to the code in question ... : Satyric0n
                    • native, : Satyric0n
                    • I've worked on the physx codebase for a couple of different projects when a source license was provided. ... : daVinci1980
      • #2901

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        By: DinK x Show Full Post

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        If it was that easy AND they aren't intentionally leaving it in the current state to make the hardware solution look better.
        
        I'm not saying that's what they're doing, but it's one of the possible implications.

        Jul 07, 2010 12:39am PDT
        If it was that easy AND they aren't intentionally leaving it in the current state to make the hardware so... : DinK
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    You think that physx is handcoded in ASM? seriously? you think ANYTHING is handcoded in ASM? : Toraz Chryx
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      of course important vector operations will be handcoded in ASM to support SSE and whatever instructions f... : moshman
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        More realistically, compiler intrinsics will be used rather than handcoded asm, unless the compiler intri... : Satyric0n
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          I'm sure that in general cases compiler intrinsics will be used, but for vector/matrix functions and the ... : moshman
          • Yes, absolutely. The single biggest time-sink related to using compiler intrinsics is verifying that outp... : Satyric0n
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      01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 011001... : [7]kami
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        no u : Toraz Chryx
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          haha someone went to the translator! : [7]kami
          • 0 : Toraz Chryx
    • not to shit on your parade but alot of shit is still being handcoded in asm. : italiano3d
    • No, that's not what I've said. When you write well optimized SSE and SSE2, you do write bits of it in ASM... : daVinci1980
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  oh man, i look forward to the pr rebuttal from this. ill expect something like 'but x87 lets us draw mor... : smacknca
  • I doubt they will say anything, it's not as if they have to justify anything. It's their product, they ca... : moshman
• nVidia being scummy? Shocked I say! : Sailor of Fortune
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  lol @ all the people saying nvidia is making bad business decisions, doesn't understand, is retarded etc.... : Pandilex
  • seems like a great strategy to avoid people using physx : moshman
  • No one in this thread is saying nvidia is making bad business decisions. It seems to be pretty standard f... : filthysock
  • Except that their product exists as part of a larger ecosystem.... by crippling the software implementati... : Toraz Chryx