PPU in the cards?

Ok, so I am not especially techno-savvy, but in this recent slashdotted article, several hardware developers are interviewed about their upcoming product, a Physics Processing Unit. Just as Graphics cards take the brunt of rendering off of the CPU, a PPU would take on the processing of Physics; collisions, movement, environmental destruction, etc. Essentially, the gaming computer of the near future (say, 1-2 years) could include the CPU, GPU and PPU all working in tandem to create environments that are incredibly immersive; destructible walls, large amounts of bodies with ragdoll physics, joints, fluid, rope/hoses, etc.

The developers claim to be already in talks with hardware manufacturers and game designers to make the product available and design killer apps to take advantage of it. They mention plug-in hardware cards in both PCI and PCI-Express versions, and also possibly selling the chipset to be included onboard in hardware devices. Retail availability of the first cards is claimed for holiday shopping season 2005.

If I'm not mistaken, physics in SL is computed server-side, rather than client side. If so, this raises an interesting possibility. Even if these cards/chipsets do not take off in the home computer market, would they be of use for server upgrades to the sims in SL?

Has LL looked at the potential for this hardware, and are they considering integrating it into future hardware revisions? Can they be adopted into the server architecture of SL without also requiring upgrades to the home PC's of thousands of SL players?

I'd be interested in any thoughts on this from people more computer-knowledgeable than myself; most particularly from any Lindens.

There would need to be built a physics engine that would utlize such an item (think graphics cards and DirectX & OpenGL support). A PPU would be dead weight till someone wrote code for it. I would say we won't see SL using one for atleast 5 years. Who knows if SL will still be around then.