I can forsee a new player coming to market with bold claims of wonderful new hardware capable of realtime raytracing. Probably with either a proprietary API or a kludge of OpenGL. Not within the next couple of years, but somewhere down the line. They will, of course, be snapped up by Nvidia ;)
Exactly! Nvidia didn't buy Ageia because they want to branch out, they bought Ageia to stifle competition. Goodbye Ageia PPU, hello Nvidia GPU with new PhysicsPowerâ„¢ technology*.
* Some arbitrary hacked on API which ATI cards can't use which enables programmers to get treble performance by using the PhysX physics engine with Nvidia cards.