Ageia
Ageia, founded in 2002, was a fabless semiconductor company. Ageia later acquired NovodeX, the company who created PhysX – a Physics Processing Unit chip capable of performing game physics calculations much faster than general purpose CPUs; they also licensed out the PhysX SDK (formerly NovodeX SDK), a large physics middleware library for game production.
Industry | Semiconductors |
---|---|
Fate | Acquired by Nvidia Corporation |
Founded | 2002 |
Defunct | February 13, 2008 |
Headquarters | Santa Clara, California, United States |
Key people | Manju Hegde, CEO Curtis Matthew Davis, COO, President, & Co-founder |
Products | Physics Processing Units Physics engines |
Parent | Nvidia |
Website | www.ageia.com |
Ageia was noted as being the first company to develop hardware designed to offload calculation of video game physics from the CPU to a separate chip, commercializing it in the form of the Ageia PhysX, a discreet PCIe card. Soon after the Ageia implementation of their PhysX processor, ATI and Nvidia announced their own physics implementations.
On September 1, 2005, AGEIA acquires Meqon, a physics development company based in Sweden. Known for its forward-looking features and multi-platform support, Meqon earned international acclaim in the games world for its physics technology incorporated in 3D Realms’ Duke Nukem Forever and Saber Interactive's TimeShift.[1]
On February 4, 2008, Nvidia announced that it would acquire Ageia.[2] On February 13, 2008, the merger was finalized.[3][4]
The PhysX engine is now known as Nvidia PhysX, and has been adapted to be run on Nvidia's GPUs.[5]
References
- AGEIA Acquires Meqon Research AB, MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — September 1, 2005
- Smalley, Tim. "Nvidia set to acquire Ageia" bit-tech.net, 4 February 2008. Accessed at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/02/04/nvidia_set_to_acquire_ageia/1 on 5 February 2008.
- NVIDIA completes Acquisition of AGEIA Technologies, NVIDIA, SANTA CLARA, CA — FEBRUARY 13, 2008 (press-release)
- Nvidia finalises Ageia deal, details future plans, Tim Smalley, 14th February 2008, bittech
- "Overview". PhysX. GeForce. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
External links
- AGEIA PhysX Physics Processing Unit Preview
- AGEIA in 2007 – Is This the Year of the PPU?
- BFG Ageia PhysX Card
- PhysX In GRAW 2