ATI Asymmetric Physics Processing with CrossFire

ATi's Asymmetric Physics Processing is basically a concept that has been much hyped up int the recent months. As you are probably aware that 3D games are quite CPU intenstive especially in calculating vectors for rendering.

The idea of ASymmetric Physics processing is to free up the CPU cycles to spend more time on other tasks, allowing them to be improved as well. Besides rendering, the detailed physics simulations that enhance the experience of recent 3D games also happen to fall into this category. Now, the technology has been developed to allow GPUs to accelerate these simulations, and so today’s GPUs are able to take on an expanded role in game computing.

Asymmetric processing refers to the use of two or more GPUs in a single system, each with differing performance and feature sets, to simultaneously execute multiple tasks. Such set up allows the mixture of high end graphics cards running in CrossFire with a lower end X1600XT for example for the Physics manipulations.

In this case, the X1600XT card can be the one doing all the PHYSICS manipulations while the X1900XT can be rendering the images.

As for launch dates, ATi has no exact dates but it plans to deliver the APIs to game developers so that it can be incorporated to take advantage of the PHYSICS card or the PPU (Physics processing unit). Will it be another AGEIA lacking games to take advantage of the PPU? Time will tell.