[MUD-Dev2] [MEDIA] Intel Purchases Game Tools Firm Havok

[Mike Rozak]

Peter Keeler wrote:
> When I heard they had bought Havok, I immediately recalled they had said 
> in their last presentation that they were pushing game developers to go 
> multi-threaded to make better use of the dual and quad core CPUs that are 
> hitting the market now. What better way to do that than to buy Havok and 
> refit it to be highly multi-threaded? Then, when game developers use 
> Havok, they get a physics engine that can make full use of those shiny new 
> quad core procs without doing much of the heavy lifting themselves.

It's more than just quad-core procs. Last week I read an article in Slashdot 
where Intel was paying someone to experiment with real-time ray-tracing on a 
16-core system.

Quad cores came out last year, affordable ones this year. Next year, Intel 
will introduce an 8 core processor, with each core running 2 threads (like 
hyperthreading, but apparently better).

Intel needs to find something to use all those cores. Physics is one things. 
On-CPU rendering (scanline or ray tracing) is another. Radiosity. Path 
finding. Speech recognition. Etc.

Plus, if Havok, which is used by most games, just happens to run 10% faster 
on an Intel then an AMD, then Intel's chips will get 10% higher ratings in 
chip comparisons, which justifies a non-trivial increment in processor 
price.