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Ageia

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Ageia Technologies, Inc.
IndustrySemiconductors
Founded2002
DefunctFebruary 13, 2008
FateAcquired by and merged into Nvidia Corporation
HeadquartersSanta Clara, California, United States
Key people
Manju Hegde, CEO Curtis Matthew Davis, COO, President, & Co-founder
ProductsPhysics Processing Units
Physics engines
Websitewww.ageia.com

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; they 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] Soon after the Ageia implementation of their PhysX processor, ATI and Nvidia announced their own physics implementations.[3]

On September 1, 2005, AGEIA acquired Meqon, 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.[4]

On February 4, 2008, Nvidia announced that it would acquire Ageia.[5] On February 13, 2008, the merger was finalized.[6][7]

The PhysX engine is now known as Nvidia PhysX, and has been adapted to be run on Nvidia's GPUs.[8]

References

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  1. ^ "Ageia To Give Away PhysX SDK On PC". gamedeveloper.com. 2006-11-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
  2. ^ "AGEIA Brings First Dedicated Physics Processor To Market; Launches New Age in Interactive Gaming". gamesindustry.biz. 2006-03-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
  3. ^ "PhysX PPU soon to be in open war with AMD/ATI and NVIDIA". arstechnica.com. 2007-02-22. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
  4. ^ "AGEIA Acquires Meqon Research AB". MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. September 1, 2005. Archived from the original on 2005-10-27.
  5. ^ Smalley, Tim (4 February 2008). "Nvidia set to acquire Ageia". bit-tech.net. Retrieved 5 February 2008.
  6. ^ "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.
  7. ^ Smalley, Tim (14 February 2008). "Nvidia finalises Ageia deal, details future plans". bittech.
  8. ^ "GameWorks PhysX Overview". nvidia.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-18. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
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