AMD Gets Cozy With Havok

You may remember that Intel acquired the software maker last year, but that won’t stop AMD from doing some harmless flirting. AMD plans to incorporate the technology in their graphics cards, and optimize their CPU performance with software that takes advantage of the company’s physics engine.

Since this could very well mean you’ll be seeing Havok’s physics being processed from AMD’s GPUs, I take this news as a good sign. Taking into account Nvidia’s purchase of Ageia, this could mean both companies would have a means of physics that would be (to some degree) offloaded from the CPU. If we can see a real world gaming performance increase, I’ll encourage it.

AMD will work with game giant Havok to tailor Havok’s game technology to AMD processors, the companies said Thursday. The plans call for optimizing game-physics effects utilizing AMD’s multicore processors and graphics processing units, or GPUs.