Advanced Micro Devices and Havok, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corp., said that they would collaborate to optimize Havok physics engine for AMD’s x86 microprocessors as well as investigate possibilities to optimize the engine for the company’s ATI Radeon graphics processing units (GPUs).
“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,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of graphics products group at AMD.
As part of the collaboration, Havok and AMD plan to further optimize the full range of Havok technologies on AMD x86 superscalar processors. The two companies will also investigate the use of AMD’s massively parallel ATI Radeon GPUs to manage appropriate aspects of physical world simulation in the future.
Previously,, when Havok was an independent company, a special physics effects engine called Havok FX that could compute physics on graphics processors was in-development. However, when Intel acquired Havok, the development of Havok FX was stopped and the solution is not mentioned on the company’s web-site anymore.
“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,” said David O’Meara, managing director of Havok.
Earlier this year graphics chip designer Nvidia Corp. acquired Ageia, another developer of physics engines, with the aim to redesign its software and enable computing of physics on GPUs.
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