HAVOK ANNOUNCES HYDRACORE™ TECHNOLOGY FOR NEXT GENERATION GAMES
Software solution will leverage built-in power and scalability of multi-threaded game platforms
San Francisco, CA – July 12, 2005 - Havok, the video game industry's leading supplier of cross-platform middleware solutions for game developers, announced today that it is developing an innovative new software technology for all of its middleware products that will help game developers leverage the built-in power and scalability of multi-core and multi-threaded next generation game platforms from manufacturers like AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
“The face of gaming will change significantly in the next two years, as the computational power available to PC and video game players takes another huge step forward,” said Jeff Yates, VP of Product Management for Havok. “Next generation game systems will offer built-in scalability in the form of multi-core and multi-processor hardware that will be standard in consumer game systems shipping in the next 12 months. Havok’s HydraCoreTM software technology is designed to help game developers tap into the true power of these systems, by distributing real-time computation of physics and character animations flexibly and evenly across multiple processors.
HydraCore is an adaptive middleware technology that will allow game developers to flexibly assign and remove threads from the computationally-heavy tasks that next-generation games will require – from computing physics simulations for dynamic and destructible worlds, to helping game characters respond more intelligently to each other and their environments. HydraCore accelerates these elements of game-play by dividing up the work load and dispatching it to any number of central or secondary processing units such as the AMD AthlonTM 64 processor family. HydraCore ensures Havok-powered games can harvest the native scalability of the next wave of consumer PC game platforms – without requiring specialized add-on hardware.
"Developers are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the computing power available from our cutting edge AMD Athlon 64 FX processors," said, Bob Brewer, corporate vice- president, AMD Desktop Business Division, Microprocessor Business Unit, Microprocessor Solutions Sector (MSS) Business. "AMD is committed to the PC game industry and supports the groundbreaking strides made by Havok in bringing multi-threaded capabilities to the next generation of PC games."
"Game developers want to squeeze the maximum performance out of all three CPU cores on Xbox 360 to realize the full potential of their games," said Tracey Frankcom, Gaming Middleware Manager in the Xbox Advanced Technology Group. "Havok's Hydracore technology will enable developers to take advantage of all that processing power by distributing their physics and animation simulations across the Xbox 360 architecture."
HydraCore will support all next-generation game systems that offer multi-core and multi- threaded hardware capabilities, including PCs and next-generation video game platforms from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Microsoft. HydraCore is also designed to gracefully support non-multi-core or single-threaded game environments to ensure the widest possible deployment options to today's largest game developers.
About Havok
Havok is the gaming industry's leading independent provider of physics and character animation middleware. Top game developers and publishers worldwide such as Sony, EA, Microsoft Game Studios, Ubisoft, and Activision have licensed Havok products for use on over 120 titles including Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Age of Empires III, Marvel: Nemesis, and Mercenaries. Havok enables game developers to create virtual worlds where players enter a dynamic, living and breathing universe with characters that interact in a completely natural and unscripted way. Havok's game specific solutions help developers achieve creative goals while reducing overall cost, time and risk associated with building today's leading games. Havok has offices in Dublin, Ireland and San Francisco.
