AMD Would Purchase AGEIA… If Price Were Right

If there were such thing as a physics-powered pot sitting around, it would be AMD’s Richard Huddy doing the stirring. In two separate interviews, Huddy gives his opinions on hardware-based physics (a la AGEIA). First off are mentions of GPU-based phyics, which Huddy explains is not going to happen anytime soon. In fact, he mentions specifics: DirectX 11. Considering that is far off, AGEIA could not be happier at Huddy’s coming forward.

Here’s where all of this intertwines. In the second interview, Huddy mentions that AMD would consider purchasing AGEIA if the price were right. This is something that I’ve thought about often, and it all seems to make sense. Intel just purchased Havok, so purchasing AGEIA as well would see a little out of place. On the other hand, AMD is not in a position to make another acquisition, as they are struggling to make up for their purchase of ATI last year.

What about AGEIA, though? This is a company who have been pushing their PhysX processor for well over two years, but haven’t made the mark they need to in the gaming industry. An acquisition by a financially stable purchaser would serve the company well, but again, that company is not likely to be AMD right now. Whatever does happen though, needs to happen soon, if AGEIA is to survive the long-haul. Of course, considering that there is virtually no competition for them right now (besides Havok), they should be safe for a while longer.

“Physics is – physics processing has a long ways to go and there are so many companies out there. [There are] quite a few middleware companies out there that are creating technology in this area, and many games, many game developers incorporate their own physics engine. So my sense is that there’s a lot of invention still left to do in this area. I’m not sure why they bought that company, to tell you the truth. It might give them some advantages with respect to Havok, but it obviously creates negative synergies everywhere else,” said Mr. Huang.

Source: X-bit labs, Custom PC