14 DAY TRIAL // If you haven't already found out, Advanced Micro Devices has entered a collaboration agreement with Intel's subsidiary, Havok, which is expected to bring forward a new physics engine for AMD's graphics cards. As part of this collaboration, the companies have recently announced that they will try to optimize Havok physics engine for AMD's x86 microprocessors, as well as investigate the possibilities to optimize the engine for the company's ATI Radeon graphics processing units.
"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.
The collaboration between the two companies should result in a product that can counter NVIDIA's physics engine. As most of you already know by now, earlier this year, NVIDIA has acquired Ageia with the aim of redesigning its software and enabling computing of physics on GPUs.
As part of the collaboration, Advanced Micro Devices and Havok plan to further optimize the full range of Havok technologies on AMD x86 superscalar processors. The companies will also investigate the use of AMD's Radeon GPUs to manage appropriate aspects of physical world simulation in the future.
Before Intel acquired the physics company, Havok was developing a special physics effects engine called Havok FX. This engine was said to compute physics on graphics processors, which is exactly what AMD is looking to bring to its Radeons. Unfortunately, upon acquisition, Intel also stopped the development of Havok FX and no mention regarding the solution is made on the company's website.
"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.
At the moment, no card with physics enabled on its GPU is available on the market. Even more, the next-generation NVIDIA graphics cards aren't expected to operate any change in this respect.