AMD ready to demo Havok physics on its graphics cards
Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:21 am
Here is an instersting update on Havok...
SourceAbout nine months ago, we learned that AMD was partnering with Intel acquisition Havok to enable physics acceleration on its graphics processors. Now it seems that the company is ready to show what it has been working on. First Havok physics demos on Radeon GPUs are expected for GDC 2009, which starts today.
No matter how you look at it, physics on graphics cards is still one big mess. Nvidia has PhysX, Microsoft is working on Direct Physics and Intel acquired Havok to jump on the physics train. AMD decided to go with Havok as well and we now have word that the company will be showing off its progress at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).
A session preview reveals that AMD will talk about “open, standards-based physics with OpenCL and ATI Stream” as well as “content scalability through server-side rendering powered by AMD's Fusion Render Cloud.” However, AMD’s Terry Makedon revealed through Twitter that the company will be showing Havok-based physics. The event is scheduled for Thursday, March 26.
AMD aid in the past that it found Havok’s physics technology to scale “extremely well across the entire family of AMD processors, including quad-core products such as the AMD Phenom X4.” What is somewhat surprising is that the physics strategy has shifted to graphics processors, which was not a priority for AMD initially.