AMD and Havok/Intel Optimize Physics for AMD

Posted on Jun 12, 08 08:48 AM PDT

When Havok/Intel and AMD work together to make physics simulation run faster on CPUs, one could say that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, right? In case you don’t know, Havok is owned by Intel and provides a good physics library for game developers. CPU makers are saying that physics is critical to games and that gameplay related physics should run on the CPU, because the AI (artificial intelligence) needs to know what’s happening in the virtual world.

Of course, these comments are aimed at NVIDIA’s vision of computing physics on the GPU. They have recently bough AGEIA that has its own “PhysX” library for developers. So, should physics run on CPUs or GPUs? Answer: Both. Game-related physics on the CPU uses simple and less numerous bodies, while “eye-candy” physics can run on the GPU at rates that CPUs just can’t match. Can’t we just all leave in peace?

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