With no direct competitor, AGEIA's discrete PPU card largely shoulders the burden of lobbying developers and consumers for advanced physics in games. Here, it is impossible to not notice some blatant similarities between this situation and the same situation seen by 3dfx and other GPU vendors in the days when a "3D accelerator" was unheard of. With the visual and performance advancements brought to the table by these discrete graphics cards, 3dfx managed to change the way games looked and ultimately made a more immersive gaming environment.



Link: Hot Hardware