When Nvidia bought Ageia Technologies earlier this year the company made it clear what it had in mind: to make the PhysX API independent of separate hardware and instead offload the work to the GPU by porting it to CUDA.

Well, only two months on, Nvidia has announced that the conversion is almost complete – meaning owners of GeForce 8 and 9 series cards will soon be able to enjoy the benefits of a physics accelerator via a simple software download. Though the technology has yet to take off, there are already around 140 games that support or plan to support it, and with Nvidia onboard, the list is poised to grow. The effect that PhysX implementation will have on frame rate in games remains to be seen though.