AMD Talks about Asymmetric Physics Processing

AMD got into the renaming business and it seems to be doing pretty well. Anything from CPUs to chipsets goes as long as they can make it look (and sell) better. Now I really don't know if that logic applies to a segment which previously had no name. Nevertheless AMD's products are getting really stylized names lately. Too bad they don't perform as well as they sound.

To detail things a little further, the hardware requirements for "Asymmetric Physics Processing" (yep, that's the name!) include two AMD ATI Radeon based graphics cards and the needed CrossFire motherboard. One Radeon will be used as GPU with the additional Radeon acting as a PPU. But as you can see in the picture, you can also setup a "Three Play" configuration in order to use a Crossfire setup and a PPU card.

ATI's Triple Play physics processing is what really matters here but this time you'll have to use two ATI Radeon graphics cards operating in CrossFire. The third card (that is not necessarily the same model as the first two) will run in PPU mode.

While Asymmetric Physics Processing requires two AMD ATI Radeon graphics cards for the processing tasks, the graphics cards don't need a physical link (like CrossFire) in order to work together. In fact, the ability to process the physics tasks asymmetrically is built in the driver, motive for which AMD claims it will also be able to pair different cards for such operations.

At the moment, AMD's chipsets are the only one that can support the APP technology. AMD 580X, ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 (for Intel) and the upcoming RD790 will all be able to host APP enabled cards. As for INTEL's chipsets, their compatibility with APP devices is unknown but I bet that if it doesn't work, it's a driver issue.