NVIDIA/Ageia

ATI has been working to integrate Havok technology in with their GPU's, allowing for physics calculations to be tightly integrated with the graphics processing. Now NVIDIA is getting into the game with their acquisition of Ageia. See :

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1202161567170.html

All we can do is speculate at this point, but I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on how this trend will impact Second Life.

Right now, all of the physics processing is done server-side. To take advantage of these moves by ATI and NVIDIA, the Lindens would have to move to a more client-centric approach for physics calculations. Does this mean that if I implement a physics-based billiards table in SL, that different clients may calculate different results for the state of the game?

Are there other MMORPG's out there that are already taking advantage of these sorts of systems? How is concurrency amongst multiple clients all performing physics calculations independently maintained?

- Ace

The report predominetly refers to the likes of Playstations, XBox etc.. it does mention PC Gaming systems. As SL runs on OpenGL and not Direct X, I wouldn't hold your breath thinking that all this accelorating advances will be ported to Open GL platforms. JMHO