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Stand-alone AI card: is it viable?

Upstart company AIseek has announced the Intia processor, the "first dedicated processor for artificial intelligence (AI)" according to its website. The website promises better terrain analysis, line-of-sight calculations, and path finding capabilities. The website offers demo videos to download, but they all seem to be offline right now (Ars Technica saw a video and was impressed).

Theoretically, the card is a great idea in the vein of Ageia's PhysX card -- who doesn't hate the lackadaisical AI found in today's games? But, as Engadget points out, it suffers from the chicken/egg dilemma: no customer will buy the card until games are made that utilize it, but no developer will make a game utilizing Intia unless it already has an installed base. The best bet for AIseek would be to lobby console makers to get its chip included in the next generation -- some of the earliest 3D cards found success because of their inclusion in PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

No one would purchase an AI processor out of support for the idea alone; the technology is great, but what high-profile developer would take the risk and program excess code for a small, possibly nonexistent, audience?

[via Engadget]