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Chip Promises AI Performance in Games
Heartless Gamer writes to mention an Ars Technica article about a dedicated processor for AI performance in games. The product, from a company called AIseek, seeks to do for NPC performance what the PhysX processor does for in-game physics. From the article: "AIseek will offer an SDK for developers that will enable their titles to take advantage of the Intia AI accelerator. According to the company, Intia works by accelerating low-level AI tasks up to 200 times compared to a CPU doing the work on its own. With the acceleration, NPCs will be better at tasks like terrain analysis, line-of-sight sensory simulation, path finding, and even simple movement. In fact, AIseek guarantees that with its coprocessor NPCs will always be able to find the optimal path in any title using the processor." Is this the 'way of the future' for PC titles? Will games powered by specific pieces of hardware become the norm?
Aren't many problems of that ilk NP-complete?
And then they can take everything and put it all in a big case with the a monitor and speakers and a special panel with the controls on it. And then all you need to do is put a slot in the front that says $1.
This guy's the limit!
what an interesting idea.
Speak before you think
This will suck 200 times faster, though. That's like a straw compared to a fire hose.
Fire hoses don't suck. You need a more visual analogy.
Maybe something like this:
"That's like a tick compared to your mother!"
One begins to wonder what the "endgame" scenario for the respective manufacturers of the physics and AI cards we're seeing. I can foresee three distinct situations:
1) The CEOs, investors, and engineers are complete idiots, and expect all the gamers of the world to buy separate physics, AI, and graphics cards
2) They're hoping to provide chips to ATI or nVidia for a "game card" instead of a "graphics card", the next generation of expensive purchases for gamers
3) They're hoping to provide chips for the nextgen xbox / playstation / wii, hoping that their chips will be the ones to make gaming interesting again.
Ok I do know I should be more tolerant of my fellow man and all that stuff, but really... this is just damned foolish.
Imagine the conversation that led to this...
-misty flashback fade-
Marketing Guy : Oh man, gaming is ready for a revolution!
Technical Guy : It's called a Wii now
Marketing Guy : Huh? We now what? -shakes head- I mean these gamers, they buy top end stuff, they have money to burn!
Technical Guy : Not really, they buy slightly under the curve and tweak up and overclock mostly
Marketing Guy : No no I read in a magazine that all gamers have more common sense than money
Technical Guy : -sigh-
Marketing Guy : These Ageis guys really whipped up a lot of frenzy about a new type of add on card.
Technical Guy : Yeah it's supposed to make the gamers run better by adding physics processing but the demo..
Marketing Guy : And they are making money hand over fist!
Technical Guy : Well, actually...
Marketing Guy : And it's so easy to make specialty stuff!!
Technical Guy : But their demo runs the same even without the card!
Marketing Guy : Wait, Wait, I got it! We'll make a card that adds more CPU power!
Technical Guy : Well dual cores add lots of CPu power that has yet to be tapped by games
Marketing Guy : No wait, even better, we'll make it special! That's what made the Ageis guys rich!
Technical Guy : Listen, the Ageis guys are not selling much, you might not want to...
Marketing Guy : We'll add better AI! That's IT!
Technical Guy : Better AI?
Marketing Guy : Yeah, we'll sell a card that makes the games run better!
Technical Guy : How's that work?
Marketing Guy : We'll umm, make it able to process AI commands like a graphics card processes graphics commands.
Technical Guy : But Graphics Commands are standardized, so they can optimize for that.
Marketing Guy : We'll get them to standardize AI commands.
Technical Guy : -twitches- But, every game has different needs from AI
Marketing Guy : So we'll make it flexible, generic, so it can do anything
Technical Guy : If it's generic processor design, it's the same as a regular CPU.
Marketing Guy : Exactly!
Technical Guy : But then what is it's advantage?
Marketing Guy : Haven't you been listening? It'll make games play BETTER!
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Fire hoses don't suck.
They do at the other end.