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Havok and AMD show off OpenCL with pretty pretty dresses

by Tim Stevens, posted Mar 27th 2009 at 9:46AM

With all the talk about OpenCL and Snow Leopard together and how the spec will allow Apple's upcoming hotness to exploit graphics accelerators, it's easy to lose track of the place where the standard could make its biggest impact: gaming. Yes, OpenGL may have lost favor in that realm in recent years, but OpenCL looks to captivate the hearts and GPUs of gamers everywhere by applying some much-needed standardization to the physics acceleration realm, first shown in public at GDC running on some AMD hardware. Havok is demonstrating its Havok Cloth and Havoc Destruction engines, the former of which is embedded below, and we think you'll agree it's quite impressive. OpenCL allows such acceleration to switch between the GPU and CPU seamlessly and as needed depending on which is more available, hopefully opening the door to physics acceleration that actually affects gameplay and doesn't just exist to make you say, "Whoa."

Continue reading Havok and AMD show off OpenCL with pretty pretty dresses

PhysX on ATI effort gets helping hand from NVIDIA

by Donald Melanson, posted Jul 8th 2008 at 12:12PM

Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has already made some considerable progress getting PhysX to run on AMD hardware, and it looks like he's now getting a helping hand from a somewhat unexpected source, with NVIDIA itself reportedly giving the project its blessing. Apparently, NVIDIA has even gone so far as to invite Badit to join its developer program, which gives him access to documentation, SDKs and, most importantly, direct access to hardware and NVIDIA engineers, a move that Badit describes as "impressive, inspiring and motivating." Badit is decidedly less impressed by AMD, however, which has apparently been unwilling to provide with any hardware or support for the project. That stubborn stance, he surmises, can only be due to AMD's backing of Intel's Havok physics engine, which NVIDIA would no doubt like to have out of the picture (hence its willingness to help here).

[Via TG Daily]

AMD back on the Havok physics engine bandwagon

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 12th 2008 at 12:03PM

After a relationship drama that belongs on daytime television, AMD is snuggling up to Intel to add Havok physics acceleration to their CPUs and GPUs. AMD likely buckled under pressure to come up with a better physics program for its chips and just went with what Rick Bergman of AMD called "the clear market leader in physics software." AMD will add the Havok Physics engine to both its multi-core CPUs and GPUs, but AMD managing director noted that the focus is on CPUs given feedback from gaming developers who like the idea of offsetting physics computation to CPU cores. Good news for game developers, indeed.

Intel to acquire Havok, in-game physics company

by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Sep 17th 2007 at 1:17AM

Intel has announced that it is to acquire Havok, a company that specializes in providing physics algorithms for a lot of big name games, amongst other digital content. The gadget link here isn't totally clear right now, but we're certain that the Ageia guys will be feeling rather antsy at the news: it ain't no coincidence that Havok CEO David O'Meara mentioned Intel's scale in the company's official press release. Intel's big, baby.

[Thanks, Yubal]