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Intel Purchases Havok

Posted by Zonk on from the causing-a-little dept.

Dr. Eggman writes "Gamasutra has the recent announcement; Intel has purchased Havok. 'As the firm noted, Havok 5 features enhancements to its core products, Havok Physics and Havok Animation, and introduces new features for Havok Behavior, a system for developing event-driven character behaviors in a game. Some of the games using Havok technology, particularly its Havok Physics solution, include BioShock, Stranglehold, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Oblivion, Crackdown, and MotorStorm - the company is also rapidly developing and marketing further tool products.' No word on what (if anything) Intel plans to do with its new acquisition."

5 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. What Intel's gonna do by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Intel's gonna do what Intel always does - they're gonna turn that stuff into silicon. Expect a physics engine chip from Intel.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    1. Re:What Intel's gonna do by SuluSulu · · Score: 5, Funny

      Intel's gonna do what Intel always does - they're gonna turn that stuff into silicon. Expect a physics engine chip from Intel. In other words Intel is going to reek HAVOK on AGEIA.
    2. Re:What Intel's gonna do by edwdig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Intel's gonna do what Intel always does - they're gonna turn that stuff into silicon. Expect a physics engine chip from Intel.

      Quite the opposite. Intel's going to work on making it scale well across multiple CPU cores so that gamers will want to buy quad core CPUs.

      Making you want to replace your CPU more often is much more attractive to Intel than starting a whole new completely unproven niche hardware line.

  2. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no point in trying to accelerate game AI since even the most sophisticated game AIs are really very simple. Most game AI is just finite state machines. Each state typically corresponds to a simple behavior (e.g. patrol this area, pursue the player, etc.). More sophisticated game AI generally just means more states.

    Even so-called learning AIs typically consist of changing the frequency with which different preset behaviors are used.

    Only games like Civilization where there are a lot of choices to be made can really saturate a processor with AI tasks. And even those aren't that complicated; they just have a lot of stuff to do.

  3. Re:Why...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did it with their C compiler in the past. When they detected anything but an Intel processor they didn't use the SMD instructions even when the processor indicated full support for SMD *IN THE INTEL DOCUMENTED WAY* You can Google for the details.