Intel Bought Havok!

[FreakSoftware]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15511

[AnotherJake]

Weird... Sure would be nice if they gave a better hint about how this is going to help Havoc or Intel. Doesn't seem to make any sense from the outside. Maybe they plan to make an offering in the Physics card market? I still suspect that market isn't going to be very profitable. Maybe they are working with someone to develop a new game console? Nah, that doesn't really make much sense either. I'm stumped... I also don't know what makes Havoc so special that they're used in so many games that I play. They must have a fantastic marketing department. It's not like their version of physics is any more special than someone else's. Maybe Intel picked them up for their marketing department!

[Adding] FTA:
"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,"

I know what Havok is, but what the heck is that supposed to mean on Intel's end? Intel's visual computing and graphics efforts... Visual computing? What is that?

[aarku]

Maybe they're going to test possible CPU designs with ragdolls.

[AnotherJake]

:lol: Of course! It's so obvious now!

[FreakSoftware]

I originally thought PPU-ish enhancements to the CPU, though feelgood in the IRC channel brought up the possibility of Intel's forthcoming "gpu" (Larabee), which seems to make the most sense.

Maybe Apple can lean on Intel now to lower the licensing costs of Havok for the Mac :rolleyes:

[AnotherJake]

I originally thought PPU-ish enhancements to the CPU, though feelgood in the IRC channel brought up the possibility of Intel's forthcoming "gpu" (Larabee), which seems to make the most sense.

There might be some sense to that. I was thinking earlier that it wouldn't because processing isn't free. IOW, GPUs are GPUs, not PPUs, and a cycle still costs a cycle, meaning that it isn't going to magically mean physics for free just because it's on the graphics card too. Heck, they have heat issues as it is!

BUT, Havock also does other standard game needs. Maybe Intel is looking to start moving some of that functionality onto the graphics cards as we move into the future. I mean, it's pretty obvious that games nowadays need more than just high-end graphics performance. They must be trying to address that with this. Games drove the adoption of consumer graphics cards in the first place. It makes sense to continue the progression with other needs.

Maybe we just don't `get it' yet. It's not like Intel isn't noodling on this stuff every day for a living... But that's exactly why I want to know more than a hint from a press release!

[FreakSoftware]

There's the Havok FX library with all of the physics based graphics effects. I think I remember watching a pretty smokin' demo video of interactive smoke and water.

This isn't what I saw, but it's pretty cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C6LrDzjfRw&mode=related&search=

[skyhawk]

a real competitor for PhysX. GOD I wish they would release PhysX for the mac.

[AnotherJake]

Okay, here it is, my wild and completely whacky prediction:

Intel will introduce a new killer consumer chipset like a graphics accelerator but with other real-time functionality like physics and animation using Havoc. This new product might be called something like a "Real-Time Accelerator" (yeah, that's the ticket...).

This Real-Time Accelerator (or RTA as it will be called) will be a freakin' amazingly phenomenal device for games and other real-time acceleration dependent CAD and simulation applications, and Intel will introduce it exclusively on the Mac initially, which will entice Steve Jobs himself to intro the product with *amazing* fanfare. Not a single company in any industry in the world will miss this event. EA will be on-board. id is going to freak out and send Carmack. BUNGIE will be back on the Mac! Microsoft is going to have a HUGE announcement that they are going to support a subset of Direct-X on the Mac because of it, with a teaser that more will be coming. The new OpenGL is going to support it too! And get this: Autodesk is going to premier a totally new power-app on the Mac -- maybe even Autocad (AND 3DSMax for the Mac!!!), utilizing RTA. This is going to be un-fricken-believable, and everyone is going to drop a bomb in their pants. The Mac is going to be the most unbelievable computing platform on the planet.

... and then three months later the API will be available on Windows with better third-party support and features and the Mac will never see RTA again.

[FreakSoftware]

:wacko:
........

[AnotherJake]

Hehe... This is what happens when things get quiet at iDevGames. :sneaky:

[FreakSoftware]

I thought this thread would have gotten more attention. I thought it was a pretty big deal.

[Frank C.]

Larrabee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(GPU))

[AnotherJake]

Well geez, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of info on Larabee either! However, looking at the arstechnica article (http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/clearing-up-the-confusion-over-intels-larrabee.ars) on it does indeed hint that there might be an opportunity for more generic processing on it, above and beyond the current restrictions we have with specialized shaders now, since it will use a subset of x86 assembly. It does also hint to me that they may indeed be working on developing the next generation of game console processors. You gotta figure they lost a lot of business to IBM lately in that department. If I use my imagination a little more I can envision a sort of console-on-a-card situation too where they can develop a product which more closely relates PCs to the console market for developers, thus reducing porting costs. Having Havoc in-house would obviously be helpful for that kind of a strategy.

[OneSadCookie]

That'd be really cool actually, to have a PCIe card that was both GPU and specialized game CPU... and would solve many of Apple's "no games for Mac" negative publicity if it took off...

[FreakSoftware]

And the drivers for this device would work with Intel-provided graphics and physics libraries? (That's the only technical reason games really aren't ported, right?) What would become of OpenGL? (or Direct3D?)

[AnotherJake]

And the drivers for this device would work with Intel-provided graphics and physics libraries? (That's the only technical reason games really aren't ported, right?)
Well, it's not the *only* reason, but the hypothesis being suggested is that it would help that the base software for said device was owned by Intel, yes. We're not talking about just drivers with Larabee though, since it appears that it'll have on-board x86 general processing capabilities.

The biggest technical reason for not porting is time and money. As I understand it, third-party devs like Havoc have a tendency to way overcharge for licensing their wares to be used on platforms like the Mac, partially from greed and partially from the amount of time it takes to support inside OS X. If a lot of that third-party support functionality was provided by Intel, and assuming it was based on their card, then that barrier could potentially be lowered dramatically.

What would become of OpenGL? (or Direct3D?)
That's a good question. Intel is pretty cozy with MS. Maybe D3D support could be contained fully on the card? It wouldn't technically be on the Mac, as in available through OS X in any way, but on the card it could do its thing. I don't see why not, unless MS absolutely refused to allow such an arrangement, which is entirely possible.

I would think that OpenGL support would continue like it currently does, regardless. There is even a possibility that it may be used as a main or parallel API to D3D for games, because other console manufacturers don't have access to D3D anymore than Apple does. Intel would have to accommodate them too if they want to sell console procs to anyone besides MS. And at this point in history I think it is unlikely that Intel would lock themselves exclusively to MS in the console industry.

There is also the possibility that Intel might be looking to develop their own API. I've heard they've been working on real-time ray tracing, and that would be dramatically different than the current breed of rasterized rendering APIs like D3D and OpenGL.

Who knows?

[AnotherJake]

BTW, I brought up ray-tracing because supposedly Larabee will have many cores (more than 8?). From what I've read, supposedly real-time ray-tracing starts to become a much more realistic possibility with that level of parallel processing.

[FreakSoftware]

The biggest technical reason for not porting is time and money.

Those aren't technical reasons. Those are business reasons. They do, however, stem from the fact that they need to port graphics (and other libraries) because most of these games tend to use DirectX only. (Then you have endian issues and 3rd party licensing like GameSpy which is really lame, but those are much smaller problems in comparison. [Endianess because going Intel-only is clearly an option, and GS is just a money/business issue not technical.])


As I understand it, third-party devs like Havoc have a tendency to way overcharge for licensing their wares to be used on platforms like the Mac, partially from greed and partially from the amount of time it takes to support inside OS X.

My understanding is that with Havok it was neither. Porting was supposedly easy to do, it's just that the license fee is the same as on Windows, but the Mac devs can't afford it because of the vastly smaller market. There was an iMG article on it awhile back that I'm positive made this claim.



Intel is pretty cozy with MS. Maybe D3D support could be contained fully on the card? It wouldn't technically be on the Mac, as in available through OS X in any way, but on the card it could do its thing.

I see it as likely being limited to working on the card as well, yes. It seems to make sense to me.


I would think that OpenGL support would continue like it currently does, regardless. There is even a possibility that it may be used as a main or parallel API to D3D for games, because other console manufacturers don't have access to D3D anymore than Apple does.

But if Windows guys can write D3D code and target this Intel card and have it work on the Mac as well... who needs OpenGL? Major companies would have to port to whatever the consoles dictate which is often an entirely separate branch of code that would never see its way onto the Mac (assuming some console actually use OpenGL).


Intel would have to accommodate them too if they want to sell console procs to anyone besides MS. And at this point in history I think it is unlikely that Intel would lock themselves exclusively to MS in the console industry.

I find it very unlikely Intel would sell to anyone in the console industry except MS. Sony has their own resources now wrapped up in Cell, and they've always had their own graphics APIs and such, Nintendo does their own thing as well, so who else there? No one but MS, for who it'd be a perfect fit.



There's a downside to this card though, in that unless they can make a mobile version or Apple puts it in every Mac for the rest of time (assuming this card becomes popular and takes up a significant share of the market), there could easily be a downward trend of even fewer options for Mac gaming. The only games that'd be on low end machines would pretty much be games mad for low end Macs. Or what if Intel pulled the plug on the card in 10 or 15 years for who knows what reason. If it ever Mac shipped with it until then, the Mac game market would be non-existent except again for Mac-only games.

Just a bit of pessimism there :)

[AnotherJake]

Well, we're on the same page. It's all speculation anyway, and taking a pessimistic viewpoint on this is entirely valid.

Reshuffling the discussion: Money really is the number one reason for not porting. Technical issues are only a part of that overall picture when deciding to port. Potential profit is a mixture of the cost of overcoming technical barriers AND market. The market isn't technical, but it is still fully as relevant if not more relevant on the Mac than technical barriers (as you pointed out). If the technology is localized to being on Intel's Larabee product, whatever that may be, then they might not need to finance as much special support for the Mac which would lower the cost of providing it, and thus raising potential profit, and the probability of getting a port.

Who would need OpenGL at that point? I really don't know, but I would be skeptical that a game-oriented version of D3D on the card could fill all the technical needs of other types of apps. Surely Microsoft would want to find a way to restrict its usage so as not to benefit other operating systems.

BTW, Sony doesn't seem to be doing so well with Cell. The PS3 is prohibitively overpriced and not doing well in the market. I don't see why they can't go back to Intel for the next console.

[OneSadCookie]

BTW, Sony doesn't seem to be doing so well with Cell. The PS3 is prohibitively overpriced and not doing well in the market. I don't see why they can't go back to Intel for the next console.

"Back"? Sony have never used Intel... Microsoft did for the original Xbox, and I don't think they'd make that mistake again...

[AnotherJake]

I forgot what they used for the PS1/2. I (wrongly) assumed off the top of my head that it was an Intel offering of some sort. I knew the original Xbox was Intel x86 though. Yeah, that got hacked to pieces, they won't do that again.

What I was suggesting is that if Intel is aiming to compete in the console proc business and they can offer something secure and profitable then there shouldn't really be any reason for companies not to use them. Heck, at one point it even made sense for Apple to move over to Intel!

[OneSadCookie]

[Disclaimer: I don't know why I think this, where I read it. Take with a grain of salt].

The problem with the Xbox was that Intel wouldn't hand over chip designs to MS, so MS was tied to Intel as the manufacturer, so they couldn't shop around for cheaper manufacturing, or do it themselves, or whatever. They had to pay the exorbitant prices Intel charged. Same with the NVidia graphics. That's why they're with IBM and ATI now... they've got the designs, if those companies don't offer decent prices on manufacturing, they can go elsewhere...

[AnotherJake]

Hmm... That's an interesting take, and it sounds vaguely familiar... (I was looking at it only from the security standpoint and didn't even think about the money politics) IBM must've done something right behind closed doors to land as much of the console market as they did! But they treated Apple badly enough to lose them in the process. I wonder if Intel is thinking their bluff (blackmail?) against MS backfired? Badly enough that they'd bend over backwards to get them back?

[bronxbomber92]

BTW, PS2 used MIPS I know..

The best reason behind Intel buying Havok I found was stated by Bullet's author Erwin Coumans/
Intel wants their upcoming massively multi-core chips to be the best in running relevant gaming applications, so acquiring Havok makes a lot of sense to me: they ensure enough Havok resources are put into their upcoming many-core architecture, rather then on GPU (NVidia, ATI/AMD) or Cell (IBM, Sony)

Here's a really cool demo of Havok for an upcoming star wars game (thanks Martin for pointing this out :) )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKphYfUk-M&mode=related&search=

[AnotherJake]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKphYfUk-M&mode=related&search=
I've seen a video demo of that a while back. Don't remember if it was the same one, but it's still pretty neato. :)

Intel wants their upcoming massively multi-core chips to be the best in running relevant gaming applications, so acquiring Havok makes a lot of sense to me: they ensure enough Havok resources are put into their upcoming many-core architecture, rather then on GPU (NVidia, ATI/AMD) or Cell (IBM, Sony)

That looks like what we've been slowly concluding here too. It looks like it might have the effect of pressuring MS to use their hardware for graphics instead of ATI, at least on future consoles.

Which brings up another question: Will Havoc now be restricted from future 360 titles?

[edit] Answering my own question: Doubt it. That'd only alienate existing game devs which would be a bad idea for Intel.