Sony and AGEIA make physics official

AGEIA and Sony have signed a deal to make the PS3 the physics wonderdog of consoles.

Sony's next generation PlayStation 3 console will make use of a unique, optimised version of AGEIA Technologies' PhysX/Novodex software development kit (SDK), as part of a licensing agreement entered into yesterday by the two companies. The SDK will allow Sony to make full use of the console's multi-processor Cell platform to accelerate physics in hardware for faster and more realistic games.

While it was known that Sony had plans to use the SDK for the PS3, it was only yesterday the companies came into an official agreement, and the news revealed that Sony would receive a specially designed version of the software.

As expected, the PhysX SDK will become part of the PlayStation 3 development kit - a software package that is given out to game studios to create titles for the console.

'With AGEIA PhysX SDK provided as part of software development kit for PS3, we believe that numbers of content with entirely new forms of physics expressions optimising the power of the Cell processor will be developed,' said Masa Chatani, CTO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in a press release today.

'This agreement between SCEI and AGEIA marks a significant landmark in the development of advanced physics-enabled games,' said Manju Hegde, founder and CEO of AGEIA Technologies, Inc. according to the same release.

'The capabilities of the AGEIA PhysX SDK combined with the power of the Cell architecture will give developers the tools necessary to introduce dynamic physical properties within games that will leapfrog game interactivity as we know it today.'

AGEIA's PhysX SDK is a multi-platform physics middleware, so it's not only PS3 developers that will benefit from the technologies. The SDK is designed to work in concert with AEGIA's physics processor, which it plans to manufacturer in the form of add-in cards for the PC platform, just like 3D accelerators are today.

The Xbox 360, Microsoft's next generation console based on IBM's PowerPC processor, will reportedly also make use of the PhysX/Novodex SDK, albeit the standard version.