Recent announcement of Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 4 console has revealed that the new gaming system will be equipped with custom AMD GPU, capable of GPGPU computations – for example, physics simulation. To showcase its processing power, a live demo of GPU accelerated particle simulation, running on the Havok engine, was demonstrated during the event.

Update: official press-release

Update #2: PhysX SDK and APEX – now on Xbox One

An opinions began to emerge, that NVIDIA PhysX SDK engine and PhysX Technology as a whole won’t find its place in the world of next-generation consoles and, thus, will be abandoned quickly.

However, official “PlayStation 4 Tools & Middleware Developers” page says that “following middleware companies have their innovative technology solutions available right now to support PlayStation 4 developers”:

Since NVIDIA does not own any AI or Animation middleware, it is pretty clear that PhysX SDK physics engine is implied here. PhysX SDK will support PlayStation 4 and is already available for developers, as our sources, close to the industry, can confirm.

It is yet unclear, how the situation with GPU acceleration (you know, that “NVIDIA technology running on AMD hardware?!?!” stuff) will be handled on PS4 , but it is now certain – PhysX is here to stay.

Update #2: official responce regarding GPU acceleration feature on PS4 was given by NVIDIA to TechPowerUp