   Intel Purchased Havok?
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15511Any ideas what Intel plans for using Havok for? And what this will do as far as licensing Havok? I'm curious about it. I have a few guesses. One is better optimizing the Intel processors and Havok API together to make it even faster for physics or Intel plans to enter the physics card market.Thoughts?   
  I read a while ago that intel plans to enter the gaming video cards market by 2009. I have no idea if that's true and if it is, I have no idea if it's related to this "buying havok" thing either. Who knows...   ;Quote:Any ideas what Intel plans for using Havok for? And what this will do as far as licensing Havok? I'm curious about it. I have a few guesses. One is better optimizing the Intel processors and Havok API together to make it even faster for physics or Intel plans to enter the physics card market.I think Intel might optimize to use Multicore CPU's in a more advanced way, doing that they don't have to enter the physics card market, also I'm hoping the release it for free for everybody like Ageia did.   ;Quote:"Havok is a proven leader in physics technology for gaming and digital content, and will become a key element of Intel's visual computing and graphics efforts," said Renee J. James, Intel vice president and general manager of Software and Solutions Group. "Havok will operate its business as usual, which will allow them to continue developing products that are offered across all platforms in the industry."I agree with idloco, that Intel will start to sell processors with specialized cores.  And acquiring companies like Havok is way to speed up that process.   ;  Yeah, I agree.  Looks like Intel is trying to build up their own on-board physics technology and maybe trying to optimise a future line of CPUs to do it well.Seems to me like they're just trying to tighten their hold on the gaming market.  If they pull this off then AMD could have tough times ahead.   ;  Intel isn't particularly interested in entering any discrete market. What they are interested in is developing a viable stream-computing platform, and to do that, they need applications. Applications need middleware, which is probably the main factor in this acquisition.Intel is known to be developing technology with many, many small, in-order x86 cores featuring very wide SIMD units. This technology is called LaraBee and will be used as the basis for accelerating many applications -- graphics, scientific calculation, etc. -- physics would be another excellent application, as woudl be multi-threaded AI and animation (which are other portions of havok's technology.) In the future, games running Havok software will surely run best on Intel's hardware.Intel is aiming to commercialize this technology, either through discreet add-in cards or through the processor socket, into the mainstream in 3-5 years time.   ;  Speaking of Havok, how much did the license cost ?Do they still follow that insulting "you arent rich enough, if you have to ask" policy ?   