AMD+Intel
Despite the fact AMD is being owned by Intel when it comes to desktop processors, it's good to see they are still able to work together. How's that? Well, AMD and Havok, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corp. said they are working together to optimize the Havok physics engine for AMD's processors, as well as trying to do the same thing for the ATI GPUs. Challenging enough?
According to Rick Bergman, AMD's senior vice president and general manager of graphics products group, "As the complexity and visual fidelity of video games increases, AMD wants to take advantage of opportunities to improve the game experience. By working with the clear market leader in physics software, AMD can optimize our platforms to consistently deliver the best possible visual experience to the gamer."
While planning to optimize all Havok technologies for AMD x86 superscalar processors, AMD and Havok are also into using the ATI Radeon GPUs to get closer to various aspects of real-world physics simulation in the future.
What about Ageia? Well, their legacy remains with NVIDIA, and by 2010, I am sure we'll see fights over the physics acceleration field between NVIDIA and AMD & Havok.
Before being acquired by Intel, Havok was working on a physics engine called Havok FX, able to work directly with GPUs for performing physics calculations, but that project was stopped since then. According to Davio O'Meara, Havok's managing director, "The feedback that we consistently receive from leading game developers is that core game play simulation should be performed on CPU cores. The clear priority of game developers is performance and scalability on of the CPU. Beyond core simulation, however, the capabilities of massively parallel products offer technical possibilities for computing certain types of simulation. We look forward to working with AMD to explore these possibilities."
It's always good to see there is a way for enemies to work together, although this is not as interesting as Intel and AMD working together on a CPU, for example(yeah, right!).
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