Ageia

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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