NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA 160
The two companies announced today that NVIDIA will acquire PhysX maker AGEIA; terms were not disclosed. The Daily Tech is one of the few covering the news to go much beyond the press release, mentioning that AMD considered buying AGEIA last November but passed, and that the combination positions NVIDIA to compete with Intel on a second front, beyond the GPU — as Intel purchased AGEIA competitor Havok last September. While NVIDIA talked about supporting the PhysX engine on their GPUs, it's not clear whether AGEIA's hardware-based physics accelerator will play any part in that. AMD declared GPU physics dead last year, but NVIDIA at least presumably begs to differ. The coverage over at PC Perspectives goes into more depth on what the acquisition portends for the future of physics, on the GPU or elsewhere.
off on a tangent (Score:3, Funny)
Well, that's because they were pondering a similar strategy to Microsoft, and were going to buy Yahoo.
Re:off on a tangent (Score:4, Funny)
It's almost like some bizarre comic.
Lets imagine that AMD and ATI teamed to to be the Super Friends.
And Intel and nVidia are the Legion of Doom.
Now, let the battle for the universe begin.
At least that's how I feel when I read
We geeks tend to take ourselves entirely too seriously,
Grammatical and spelling errors are bonuses.
Re:off on a tangent (Score:5, Informative)
This makes Nvidia the "odd man out" because they don't make processors. Both Intel and AMD have integrated solutions and obviously want physics processing on the CPU so that they can sell 7 core 3.21GHz processors. NVidia has to break the mold if they want sales... they got shunned the last round of consoles for IBM and ATI, and Microsoft pretty much let ATI write the book for DX10 this round. NVidia + Ageia only makes sense if they'll make an open source console that runs either AMD or Intel CPUs. Games would need to run flawlessly, without "installing" just like a console. There's a hole for PC gaming right now... Apple's not filling it (they think it's stupid) Wintel is not helping (Microsoft only wants Vista gaming, and Intel wants to sell integrated graphics) so a well done Linux console could help... but there's too much IP in the way to make it happen.
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Re:off on a tangent (Score:4, Informative)
Nvidia needs a an x86 processor to compete. Sure, Nvidia could just adapt their GPU architecture and expand the language to make a general-purpose VLIW processor. They could package it and sell it as an Itanium competitor. But nobody wants to use a non-x86 chip in mainstream markets, and that's where the long-term money is.
This is why Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, and now even OS X run on x86: if your OS has redeeming or unique qualities, more people will buy based on OS features alone if your hardware platform is agnostic.
And herein lies two problems: one, while you can make x86 processors without a license, you are constantly in danger of litigation from Intel's massive patent portfolio. In the last two decades, every x86 chipmaker has eventually negotiated a cross-license agreement with Intel. The other problem is, it is hard to build a new x86 processor from-scratch. Thus, a takeover bid for an x86 processor manufacturer is likely the best way to solve Nvidia's problem; they get a license to keep Intel at-bay, and a solid starting point.
I'm thinking Via, personally. Their sales have slumped in the last year, and they've stopped making Intel chipsets. In fact, Intel has been bullying poor Via for the last year, offering a new Intel chipset license if they just stop manufacturing CPUs. Either Nvidia will buy Via, or Via will spin-off their processor division for some cash. Thanks to the Intel cross-license Via purchased along with IDT, their processor arm is a goldmine in the long-run.
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Must bundle with GPU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, I don't believe games drive the adoption of hardware as much as you might be thinking. As a case in point, look at Vista. Ugly and bloated, yes, but perforce nearly everywhere. And the minimum requirements for Aero (which is the one feature your average user is going to jump on -- ooh, it's pretty!) are going to do more to push the next large jump in base video card standards than any given game.
Retailers don't have enough fiscal incentives to stop pushing Vista, even if they do try to gain positive PR by selling Ubuntu or XP on a few low-end models. And if they're pushing Vista, they want to support the pretty interface the public expects. By making hardware-accelerated rendering a practical requirement of the OS, Microsoft has raised the bar of the "minimum acceptable" video card.
Right now we see physics cards as a niche product, barely supported. It has been the same with all technical developments. But if we're heading toward 3D interfaces (which I believe we are,)then physics can only play an increasing roll in such an environment. If that should become the case, then a dedicated processor will be much more valuable then assigning a generic CPU core to try and handle the calculations.
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Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:4, Interesting)
I also don't see any gouging going in in gaming PCs. I recently built a $1000 gaming PC and prebuilt models with similar specs were selling for $1100-1200, which is not much of a markup.
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PC gaming enthusiasts aren't a very large market compared to console gamers, therefore most studios are likely more focused on developing games for consoles.
This hurts PC gaming, no matter how you look at it.
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The way I picture things, a Physics Processing unit (PPU?) will end up like FPUs: at first an optional, narrow-use add-on, then integrated on premium products, then more widespread as software vendors feel comfortable relying on it, and finally ubiquitous and practically indispensable.
And then Slashdotters will be able to say, "You kids with your integrated PPUs nowadays -- when I was your age, we had to calculate trajectories and drag coefficients by hand, and we liked it that way
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Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:5, Informative)
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I can't seem to find the link to the paper that discussed it in detail, if I can find it I'll post it later...
Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_processing_unit#GPUs_vs_PPUs [wikipedia.org]
There are differences. Otherwise Sony wouldn't have wet themselves when they announced Cell technology in the PS3 or Microsoft could of countered their ATI GPU was pretty much the same thing or more powerful or however the market types would of spun it if that was the case
The two architectures are subtly different... (Score:2)
AGEIA's problem is that they're kinda obscure and don't make custom chips.
What NVIDIA brings to the table is a strong brand name and a big manufacturing process. If they can get the price of the PPU down to half of what it is now (by integration into the graphics ca
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For most games if you turn down the graphics the gameplay isn't supposed to change that much. So people with cheaper video cards can still play the game.
Whereas what happens if you turn down the physics? For the gameplay to not change the crap that's bouncing around can't matter at all.
I'd rather the physics mattered.
But if the physics mattered, people with cheaper physics cards might not be able to play the game.
The game makers won't like that :
Re:Must bundle with GPU (Score:4, Interesting)
And if nothing else, Nvidia also get a team of engineers who have worked together and have both DSP and current game industry technology experience.
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'Jiggle physics' and particle systems, of course, can stay on-GPU.
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With the current PC architecture, the CPU has to send data to the Physics card, read the data back, then finally send it down to the GPU. This would have to be done for things like character animation (ragdoll motion), particle systems for visual effects (bouncing off the scenery/characters). Ideally, you would want the Physics processor to have a direct path to the GPU. Then you could avoid two of these steps.
Thats assuming you run your main loop on either the GPU or physics card which doesnt seem like a sensible idea....but then i dont really have a clue about game programming.
Here comes the bandwagon... (Score:1, Insightful)
The Future of Physics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Future of Physics (Score:5, Funny)
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Apply mud. Liberally.
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I wonder how this will affect AMD's GPU offerings (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Good (Score:1)
So developers will have to make 3 versions of the game, then?
Can't wait for DirectX 11(tm) Now with Fizziks Power (tm).
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At least Satan can put away his parka for another year, and we can rest assured the sun is not going red giant anytime soon.
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You say that sarcastically, but I actually would like to see something like "OpenPL" (Open Physics Language).
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And this doesn't even get into the details about strategy; continuous vs fixed time steps, different orders of integration, collision detectio
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Whither Nvidia/PhysX? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Purchase Aegia
- Continue selling dedicated Physics addon-cards
- Integrate PPU onto Graphics Cards
- (somewhere along the line, get full Microsoft Direct-Something endorsement/support of dedicated physics processing)
- possibly by licensing to AMD "PPU included on Graphics Card" rights, thusly invoking the power of Least Common Denominator
- Integrate PPU circuitry/logics into GPU (making it faster/more efficient/cheaper than equivalent solution licensed to AMD)
- ?? Profit ??
In the end, for this to *really* succeed, it needs to be a "Least Common Denominator" factor. So it *requires* full support by Microsoft and Direct-X (them being The Big Factors in the games industry). And in order to get full support from The Windows Monopolist, you'll probably (not absolutely necessary, mut it'd make it much easier to convince Microsoft) need to enable AMD/ATI to leverage this technology, to some degree.Remember folks, Nvidia don't need to *kill* AMD/ATI, they only need to stay one or two generations ahead of them in technology. So they *could* license them "last years tech" for use on their cards, to make "Least Common Denominator" not a factor which excludes their latest-get tech implementations.
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I wish I still had Mod-Points, 'cos that deserves a +1, Insightful!
Yes, people seem to forget that business doesn't have to be ruthless. Sure, you can take that path and it has been proven to be effective by people in many in
Interesting news. (Score:3, Insightful)
The exciting aspect to this acquisition is the stronger fusion of two companies that have the ability to harness processing power without historical limitations. ATI/AMD really didn't have this, with AMD stuck with x86. Something like Cell is interesting in this space. However, it lacks flexibility in matching up the main core with the secondary cores. Why bring in PowerPC, for that matter?
This will lead to great things. It is fun again to follow computer architecture.
Why do we need physics cards? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Why do we need physics cards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Running through grass could cause it to deform and brush the character, and some of it gets stepped on and stays bent down. Or in sports games, each limb could have a better defined clipping box and rules for how it can flex.
Then when two players collide going for a ball, they hit more realistically and don't clip through each other. Especially on the slow motion replays it would look nice.
Or in a racing game, when cars crash, they could really crash. Imagine bodywork deforming and "real" parts going flying, instead of only a flash of sparks.
Also, it would be cool for grenades and other explosives to properly damage the room and buildings in games that want realism. Walls that crumble into rubble. Tables that break into chunks and splinters. Ceilings that collapse when the supports are destroyed or weakened too much.
Then outside, no more indestructible walls. When I ram a truck or tank into an unreinforced building, something actually happens. As in the vehicle crashes through the wall, or continues through the building with momentum.
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Tables that break into chunks and splinters.
Almost every game nowadays has breakable objects. The chunks are generally pre-determined, not generated based on where you hit, but it works.
Or in a racing game, when cars crash, they could really crash. Imagine bodywork deforming and "real" parts going flying, instead of only a flash of sparks.
If you want something like that that's out now, check out FlatOut and FlatOut 2 on Steam. The cars are fully physics simulated, and a lot of the track is destructible.
But still, the reason cars can't be damages is normally a licensing issue. "You can use our cars, but they can't be damaged". FlatOut (2) has no licensed vehicles.
Destructible buildings though, that WO
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Almost every game nowadays has breakable objects. The chunks are generally pre-determined, not generated based on where you hit, but it works.
It "works" in the sense that it looks rather ridiculous. You might not notice it in a fast action game, because you are in the next room before the chunks and splinters hit the ground, but for actual interaction with the game world the current stuff is just way to simple. One of the easiest examples is rag-doll animation, which looks nowhere near what a real human would look, its not even close and the reason is simply that accurate simulation would need a bunch more processing power then is available.
But still, the reason cars can't be damages is normally a licensing issue.
Lic
Re:Why do we need physics cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
When the player moves forward he pushes whatever is under him forward.
I'm not kidding, try standing on something and moving. In reality there's no real problem, as long as the centre of gravity of you+object is under the object's base. If it's light enough, you might kick it out behind you. In a game, 99% of the time you will kick the object under you forwards and out from under you.
Try standing on a barrel in Half-Life 2 for example. The game even gives you a puzzle at the start where you have to stack crates to get through a window, where you can notice this problem.
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Crysis [wikipedia.org] has this, it isn't entirely accurate but the grass and tree branches move as you push through them.
Most games from the last few years have destructable objects, as said elsewhere the 'pieces' are pre-determined but the effect is good enough.
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Unfortunately most of those things are only avialable in demos atm. UT3 has a couple of special maps that do some neat stuff, but then you start running into problems with the video card trying to keep up with the 100 or so bricks
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I still like the idea of a PPU, but it would be nice if it were intergrated straight into the GPU or the CPU, or a chip on the Mobo, just like so many other dedicated devices that have come before it.
I just wish Nvidia and ATI and 3rd party software and start seeing some neat GPU based t
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The video is the video and the physics is the physics. Currently right now all the physics is handled by the CPU or by the PPU if you have it and software supports it.
I think you are going on about how "game physics" is not the same as real physics, which is pretty obvious to anyone that's been following the tech. Fully blown real material physics simulations couldn't run in real time on any machine currently known to man and
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Back ten years ago, when games were ten times cheaper to make, 3dfx had games that only worked on their cards.
Then around 2000, games ran on both the Riva TNT 2 Ultra and the GeForce 256. Except the second card had hardware T&L and the Riva did not. Games with the effects looked better on the GeForce.
Once half the cards o
A physics card is just dual-core for the idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
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Oh wait. General purpose CPUs aren't very good at certain types of workloads.
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The whole point of a physics card is to move the calculations away from the CPU (which is so generalized it can't be optimized better than a hardware implementation). Having a card dedicated to processing physics simulations means it gets 100% of the PPU's attention instead of 10% of CPU1's attention, 11% of CPU2's attention, 5% of CPU3's attention and 13% of CPU4's attention (This is after all a PPU, not a CPU). Not only that, the PPU and the hardware on which it is set is optimiz
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Sometimes, when a mainframe and a television set love each other very much...
Naw, man. At least in terms of the PC architecture, graphics hardware has been available in expansion card form since the original IBM PC offered your choice of MDA (text only) and CGA (limited four-color) cards.
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I get the point of a PPU. But at this point brute force is cheaper and easier. CPUs do well enough at processing physics, and they are fast enough and cheap enough that it's smarter to run respectable physics code there instead of spending an extra $100 to $200 on an expansion card that provides almost zero gameplay enhancement. PPUs may have been a good idea ten or fifteen years ago when CPUs were slower, but game physics engines haven't improved significantly since 2003. Faster processors are available ch
Re:A physics card is just dual-core for the idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine instead of designers creating models of buildings they actually built them. That is a brick building had individual bricks all stacked on each other. Whenever you hit it with an explosive it would actually crumble like a real building or burn like a real building. That is a lot of calculations which a general CPU isn't the best at.
The thing is not enough people have PPUs in their computers so you can't include it into core game play yet. Hopefully nVidia acquiring Ageia will allow them to start bundling it with their GPUs or even better yet offer it embedded on their motherboards. While graphics are easily scaled, game play elements are not. I wouldn't be surprised if you see PPUs being crucial to the game on consoles before PCs.
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I guess I can stop waiting for Linux support (Score:2)
Re:I guess I can stop waiting for Linux support (Score:4, Informative)
They were Binary-only, but they were good in that they were fast, stable, and supported all the major functions of their cards. Hardly half-assed if you ask me.
3D physical desktops (Score:2, Informative)
*a community isn't going to develop video card drivers as well as the people who make the cards
*a community is much more likely to stall and slow down
*in most cases the fact software is open source doesn't mean much as one company or another has complete control over the product (look at OO)
the only arguments for it are that
*more peopl
Havok (Score:1)
GPGPU and Nvidia (Score:2)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned CUDA [nvidia.com] yet, which is Nvidia's existing entry into the world of general purpose GPU computing. So far their target market is mostly dedicated calculations with limited interoperability with OpenGL/DirectX, but I expect we'll see future cards that can partition their compute resources between multiple tasks, like rendering and physics. Hopefully, porting over the PhysX SDK will help grow the GPGPU toolset, and make it easier to use.
(CUDA already transforms the 8800 GTX i
Nvida and AMD were already working on Physics (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/06/ati_gpu_physics_pitch/ [reghardware.co.uk]
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If I have a server with example game running and it's calculating physics, can I then grab back that batch of models I sent off for physics and then send the updated coordinates to the players computers? Or is it just part of the graphics rendering pipeline?
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Can I then grab back that batch of models I sent off for physics and then send the updated coordinates to the players computers? Or is it just part of the graphics rendering pipeline?
It's mostly part of the graphics rendering pipeline. Ageia's "physics engine" is mostly used for particle effects (smoke, fire, rain, snowflakes, etc.) which don't affect the gameplay at all. There were attempts to use it for actual game physics, but the performance was no better than doing that on the main CPU. For part
Geographical Ramifications (Score:2)
Talk about a niche market... (Score:2)
Heck, fewer and fewer PC's come with dedicated GPUs. Integrated video can now handle dual monitor output and HDTV decoding. It's only gamers and graphics designers who need them now.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't integrated video use an embedded GPU to do the bulk of the work? You can't run Vista with Aero turned on without a GPU so all the Vista PCs shipping with Aero enabled have GPUs in them. I think you meant fewer and fewer PCs come with dedicated graphics cards or high end GPUs. Which is the s
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Though, integrating mainstream GPU functionality into the CPU core is only a few years away, IMHO. AMD has said about as much with regards to their "Fusion" core plans. Time will tell.
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Yeah, Fusion should do wonders for the integrated GPU market but we'll always have the dedicated graphics card segment for the enthusiast. The more things we can get on a single chip the better for applications where size is important.
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I think looking back at how 3dfx and glide-only games shows some important similarities. 3dfx managed to capture enough of the gamer market that games were made that would only work on their cards. Maybe only a dozen, but it was still notable that only part of the total market supported having those games. Many of the other games could be run in either Glide or Op
this is good to hear (Score:2)
The reason AMD wasn't interested (Score:2)
Actually, AMD designed this whole Hyper Transport bus with dedicated hardware acceleration co-processors in mind. In their world, you wouldn't need a dedicated add-in board, just an open HT socket on the motherboard. Then if you want to add the physics acceleration, just pop in the chip. Putting the accelerator on the GPU card would increase the costs of an already expensive board,
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I don't like being tied into Vista for the latest hardware support when it comes to gaming. Microsoft developers have gone on record as saying there is no reason DirectX 10/10.1 couldn't be used with XP. They just wanted it to be used as a 'dividing point' in which to ditch all the old tech... Something like that. It was in a Maximum PC a while back... Makes ya wonder what happened to OpenGL in the PC gaming market.
But to veer a little, I will say I found that the driver iss
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Maybe if OpenGL development was run as a dictatorship rather than an oligarchy, it would catch on. Right now it's lagging behind DirectX featurewise, because development by committee is slow.
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OpenGL is supported by all the consoles (except the XBox of course) and all major operating systems (Except properly by Windows)
It is still alive well and going forward and is used in Graphics systems other than Games (Direct3D was only for games)
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You do not have to max out your credit card to get good performance in a DX10 card:
The Radeon 3850 brings us something we've been begging for ever since the DirectX 10 cards were introduced: a sub-$200 card with performance comparable to the high-end products. The Radeon 3850 delivers Geforce 8800 GTS 320mb performance for $100+ less. If you're looking to get the b
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1. GPU's tend to dominate when doing certain calculations. Most notably floating point intensive applications . See: Folding@home. Therefor with the current stated intentions of both Intel and AMD to incorporate GPU type capabilities into their general purpose processors nVidia needs to further innovate above and beyond their current level.
2. By incorporating an already tried and true, robust hardware based physics model int
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Fab capability... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it takes a company like Intel years to crank out something like that, a company with debatably the top notch fabrication capabilities in the world, what are nVidia's chances, given that only now they are feasibly able to leverage 65 nm fabrication processes for manufacture of their chips. Fabrication processes aren't everything, but it is a decent indicator of how the cards would be stacked for nVidia going into that market.
I personally would love to see nVidia enter the market with a viable offering, if only because I fear AMD is blowing the situation and the market desperately needs comparable vendors to compete, but I'm not optimistic about nVidia's capabilities.
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That's true in my experience as well. I bought a second-hand GPU some time ago, and experienced severe instability. I fired up a hardware monitor, and sure enough, it was chugging along at 100-108 degrees Celsius under load. I was quite astounded that it didn't burn out.
I opened the case, and the fan and air ducts on the card was completely clogged. The fan spun, but moved no air at all. I removed a solid block of lint from the ducts after disass
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