FiringSquad has an interesting article about ATI's take on GPU-accelerated physics. Earlier this week NVIDIA announced that they were partnering with Havok to bring physics acceleration to the GPU. But what about ATI? FiringSquad asked ATI if they plan to take on physics acceleration, and what they think of AGEIA's PhysX processor:

FiringSquad: In light of NVIDIA's announcement with Havok today on using HavokFX with GeForce cards, we were wondering if you guys had a response to NVIDIA? Is ATI working with Havok on getting Havok FX working with ATI's shader model 3.0 Radeon X1K line? Have you looked into running this with CrossFire? Will you be working with Havok on getting Radeon support integrated into Havok FX, or do you plan on going your own way?

Will Willis: Regarding Havok, while we're not making any announcements at the show, I can tell you that ATI will support all major physics engines. The beauty of ATI's X1K architecture is that it gives game developers unmatched processing power for physics - it's got everything you need to push parallel processing hard: powerful MIMD multithreaded engine, strong performance in dynamic branching, and low latency. All that gives developers the creative freedom to push the limits of realistic physics in their games. So we're supporting the big players, and we're delivering superior performance. As for specific cards and CrossFire, you can bet that we're exploring all the options when it comes to physics on the GPU.

Havok itself has said that they're a cross-platform software provider and that they don't want to lock developers into any one specific hardware choice. They also recognize the strength in using the GPU to handle game physics. So all that said, you can probably see where this is going, but right now ATI isn't announcing anything specific.

We will be talking about physics on the GPU behind closed doors at GDC, and if you'd like I can send that presentation to you later this week. It goes into more detail on the differences hardware can make in driving physics performance, and where ATI is aiming to take this market going forward. I'll also make sure to get in touch as we get ready to make some announcements on this stuff down the road