A physics processing unit offloads complex mathematical calculations from the central processing unit to simulate physical behaviors in real time. These chips feature specialized architectures optimized for parallel processing of vector mathematics and particle systems. By handling collision detection and fluid dynamics in hardware, they free up the main processor for other logic tasks.
Check if the board recognizes the PPU, otherwise the host CPU will choke on the collision calculations.
Discrete physics chips are a historic architectural concept, as their vector processing tasks have largely been absorbed into general-purpose graphics cards.
Related terms
CPU
The central processing unit is the primary logic chip that executes instructions and coordinates system operations.
Graphics processing unit
A specialized processor designed to rapidly manipulate memory to accelerate image creation.
Coprocessor
A supplementary processing chip designed to offload specific, mathematically intensive tasks from the main processor.