Ageia, founded in 2002, was a fabless semiconductor company. In 2004, Ageia acquired NovodeX, the company who created PhysX – a Physics Processing Unit chip capable of performing game physics calculations much faster than general purpose CPUs; it also licensed out the PhysX SDK (formerly NovodeX SDK), a large physics middleware library for game production.[1]
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 discrete PCI card.[2][3] Soon after the Ageia implementation of its PhysX processor, ATI and Nvidia announced their own physics implementations.[4]
On September 1, 2005, Ageia acquired Meqon from Meqon Research AB, a physics development company based in Sweden. Known for its forward-looking features and multi-platform support, Meqon earned international acclaim for its physics technology incorporated in 3D Realms’ Duke Nukem Forever and Saber Interactive’s TimeShift.[5]
On February 4, 2008, Nvidia announced that it would acquire Ageia.[6] On February 13, 2008, the merger was finalized.[7][8]
The PhysX engine is now known as Nvidia PhysX, and has been adapted to be run on Nvidia’s GPUs.[9]
References
- ^ “Ageia To Give Away PhysX SDK On PC”. gamedeveloper.com. 2006-11-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
- ^ “AGEIA Brings First Dedicated Physics Processor To Market; Launches New Age in Interactive Gaming”. gamesindustry.biz. 2006-03-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
- ^ By (2024-05-06). “Retrogadgets: The Ageia PhysX Card”. Hackaday. Retrieved 2025-05-01.
- ^ “PhysX PPU soon to be in open war with AMD/ATI and NVIDIA”. arstechnica.com. 2007-02-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
- ^ “AGEIA Acquires Meqon Research AB”. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. September 1, 2005. Archived from the original on 2005-10-27.
- ^ Smalley, Tim (4 February 2008). “Nvidia set to acquire Ageia”. bit-tech.net. Retrieved 5 February 2008.
- ^ “NVIDIA completes Acquisition of AGEIA Technologies” (press-release). nvidia.com. 2008-02-13. Archived from the original on 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
- ^ Smalley, Tim (14 February 2008). “Nvidia finalises Ageia deal, details future plans”. bittech.
- ^ “GameWorks PhysX Overview”. nvidia.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-18. Retrieved 2024-04-11.