Saturday, September 15th 2007

Intel To Acquire Havok

Intel Corporation today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Havok Inc., the leading provider of interactive software and services used by digital media creators in the game and movie industries. Havok will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. The acquisition will enable developers in the digital animation and game communities to take advantage of Intel's innovation and technology leadership in the creation of digital media.

"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, vice president and general manager of Intel's 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."

Havok's modular suite of software development tools is used by game and digital animation creators to build realistic video games for all types of hardware and digitally animated movies. The company's combination of superior technology and dedication to customers has led to its technology being used in more than 150 of the world's best-known game titles, including "BioShock," "Stranglehold," "Halo 2," "Half Life 2," "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion," "Crackdown," "Lost Planet: Extreme Condition," "MotorStorm" and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." In addition, Havok products have been used to create special effects in movies such as "Poseidon," "The Matrix," "Troy," "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

"This is a great fit for Havok products, customers and employees," said Havok CEO David O'Meara. "Intel's scale of technology investment and customer reach enable Havok with opportunities to grow more quickly into new market segments with new products than we could have done organically. We believe the winning combination is Havok's technology and customer know-how with Intel's scale. I am excited to be part of this next phase of Havok's growth."

Havok was founded in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland, and has offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Stockholm, Calcutta, Munich and Tokyo. The company will be a wholly owned Intel subsidiary and continue to operate as an independent business working with its customers in developing digital media content. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Source: Intel
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33 Comments on Intel To Acquire Havok

#1
Wile E
Power User
Oh crap. What does this mean for AMD/ATI users I wonder?
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#3
SpoonMuffin
acctualy unless intel puts out a ppu/gpu of its own thats user retail level they would be VERY stupid to not support amd/ati and nvidia cards(intel dosnt like nvidia because nvidia wont just let intel support sli official for free )

meh, intel will screw this up i would bet, bye bye havok, hope your employs start a new company like the gradge games guys did when dynamix was shutdown by sierra...blah more depressing bs
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#4
OnBoard
One company to rule them all :/ So now everytime a movie is made with the help of Havok there is a Core™2 Quad add?
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#5
Nkd
i dont understand why this will be a stupid move, i think its a brilliant move by intel, they need professionals inputs in their upcoming discrete graphics part, i think its better for employee of havok and intel, remember intel is not a broke amd right now so those people dont have to worry about losing their job, i am pretty sure they are more than happy to be owned by intel.
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#6
wazzledoozle
Nkdi dont understand why this will be a stupid move, i think its a brilliant move by intel, they need professionals inputs in their upcoming discrete graphics part, i think its better for employee of havok and intel, remember intel is not a broke amd right now so those people dont have to worry about losing their job, i am pretty sure they are more than happy to be owned by intel.
You dont understand precisely because you dont understand.

I doubt a physics-engine company is going to help in making graphics hardware.
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#7
Unregistered
i think this could be a good thing not bad.intel wont stop licenceing this to other companies for games and such,and havok co. will have more resources to work with which can only improve the havok system.
#8
Deleted member 3
Glump BliermpThis is gay.
Quality response there, please don't do it again.
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#9
jocksteeluk
well one positive is anti intel game developers may switch away and use a development tool less resource intensive that the havok tools, another invite for openGL to make a massive comeback.
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#10
Deleted member 3
jocksteelukwell one positive is anti intel game developers may switch away and use a development tool less resource intensive that the havok tools, another invite for openGL to make a massive comeback.
There are game developers that are actually anti Intel or AMD?
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#11
tkpenalty
DanTheBanjomanThere are game developers that are actually anti Intel or AMD?
Dans right guys, game developers actually dont have the time to be immature and side with a company. Its pretty pessimistic and immature thinking that intel will try to run a monopoly, they just want to maximize their profits, and guys if you bitch about this...think about it, is there any point of bitching that intel gained more market share?

Moreover think about it, if they optimized the game to run faster on a specific platform, wouldn't the game developers have a smaller income? Think about that as well.
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#12
WarEagleAU
Bird of Prey
Just a one up on AMD. Intel cant buy a graphics company, so they buy Havok, which is a game engine maker if Im not mistaken.
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#13
Deleted member 3
WarEagleAUJust a one up on AMD. Intel cant buy a graphics company, so they buy Havok, which is a game engine maker if Im not mistaken.
They got most of the 3Dlabs team, have several licenses from Imagination and have their own team. They don't really need to buy a whole graphics company.
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#14
effmaster
DanTheBanjomanThey got most of the 3Dlabs team, have several licenses from Imagination and have their own team. They don't really need to buy a whole graphics company.
So true

But with this acquisition of Havok one does wonder if Havok will release an equivalent of the Ageia Physx Card this would just make me lol if people suddenly decided to buy that after Physx has already been out close to what about 2 years?:roll::roll::roll:

But seriously Halo 2 used Havok?

And Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix being one of the 150 well known titles that used Havok i call bullshit on that lol.

I hardly even heard any talk about the game let alone anything positive about it:):laugh::laugh::laugh:
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#15
mas0n
This is all about physics acceleration in Intel Octal-core CPUs designed to compete with AMD Fusion project.
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#16
Glump Bliermp
DanTheBanjomanQuality response there, please don't do it again.
I'm not even going to point out the irony here.
Nkdi dont understand why this will be a stupid move, i think its a brilliant move by intel.
Duh. This is a brilliant move by intel because now intel can bring some proprietary addition to their processors specifically for the Havok Engine. They'll patent that addition. Then in ALL benchmarks, games will run better on Intel chips. Then AMD will go out of business. There will be nobody to compete with Intel, and we'll all be forced to pay whatever Intel tells us to pay. All the while, there would be no more incentive for Intel to innovate new products because there's no competition. This may be good for Intel, but this sucks for you and me.
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#17
Ravenas
Glump BliermpI'm not even going to point out the irony here.


Duh. This is a brilliant move by intel because now intel can bring some proprietary addition to their processors specifically for the Havok Engine. They'll patent that addition. Then in ALL benchmarks, games will run better on Intel chips. Then AMD will go out of business. There will be nobody to compete with Intel, and we'll all be forced to pay whatever Intel tells us to pay. All the while, there would be no more incentive for Intel to innovate new products because there's no competition. This may be good for Intel, but this sucks for you and me.
Lol....AMD won't got out of buisness. AMD could easily aquire ageia physx and do the same thing. This will barely effect the market.
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#18
TheGuruStud
Goodbye havok, nice knowing you. Say hello to your new, evil overlords, for me.

And to AMD, prepare your lawyers for when the benchies go sour.
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#19
Steevo
So Intel adds some propretairy hardware to their chips, patents it, and only one company, out of many can use it. I doubt that game makers will fall for this, make half of their userbase obsolete? More than likely it is just to put the squeeze on AMD/ATI for licansing the code.




Good move by Intel, possibly bad for AMD/ATI. But inthe day and age of quad core processors they should be able to do a software emulation of the hardware, hell we have been using software for years with no problems.
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#20
Sasqui
I think Intel is finally trying to diversify into the software sector. The only software they've made (that I know of) are hardware tools and hardware acceleration optimizers.

Does anyone not agree or know differently?

There is also the possibility that some serious Havok game engines can/will be optimized for Intel/NVidia. This'll leaving those wanting some great game titles with little chioce but Intel platform for performance. "Hey look at this kids, the #1 game runs 30% faster on an intel rig!"

And then there's the media sector they could infiltrate (FX software used in blockbuster movies, currently dominated by a few players like Autodesk).
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#21
a111087
RavenasLol....AMD won't got out of buisness. AMD could easily aquire ageia physx and do the same thing. This will barely effect the market.
lol, who needs ageia physx?!
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#22
Glump Bliermp
RavenasLol....AMD won't got out of buisness. AMD could easily aquire ageia physx and do the same thing. This will barely effect the market.
Hardware company buying a hardware company is one thing; hardware company buying a software company that's used in many of the best games, is another. Besides, AGEIA PhysX is a joke. Anyway, I smell anti-trust all over this.
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#23
Nkd
wazzledoozleYou dont understand precisely because you dont understand.

I doubt a physics-engine company is going to help in making graphics hardware.
well thanks for your generous response, by no means i was directing it toward only their hardware, intel has been looking for software engineers also, they need professionals, i am sure people at havok are not stupid, and they could help intel. and also i agree with the statement that they are probably trying to squeeze nvidia and amd both, specially nvidia because of the fact they are giving intel the hardest time on licensing sli.
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#24
TheGuruStud
Nkdwell thanks for your generous response, by no means i was directing it toward only their hardware, intel has been looking for software engineers also, they need professionals, i am sure people at havok are not stupid, and they could help intel. and also i agree with the statement that they are probably trying to squeeze nvidia and amd both, specially nvidia because of the fact they are giving intel the hardest time on licensing sli.
agreed

I always wonder what would've happened if AMD and Nvidia could've worked things out. Nvidia obviously has the best parts (performance-wise if you're going to nit pick about something else :P). Together I think they would be unstoppable against intel.
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#25
SpoonMuffin
tkpenaltyDans right guys, game developers actually dont have the time to be immature and side with a company. Its pretty pessimistic and immature thinking that intel will try to run a monopoly, they just want to maximize their profits, and guys if you bitch about this...think about it, is there any point of bitching that intel gained more market share?

Moreover think about it, if they optimized the game to run faster on a specific platform, wouldn't the game developers have a smaller income? Think about that as well.
acctualy intel would do exectly what has been implyed, they would happly make it so that the phsics engine works better on intel hardware then anybody elses, and game developers acctualy do favor intel already, sse1-2-3 support is COMMON now and has been for years, but many games dont support 3dnow/3dnow+/3dnow pro, dispite the fact that using them can have a very postitive impact on game performance, for an example run riddick EFBB using the 3 diffrent paths on an amd system(3 diffrent exe sets avalable in the games folder)

and game devs for many years have favored Nvidia or ATI, or back in the day 3dfx, this again isnt uncommon, and can cause problems, for example some games that nvidia pays to get made "the way its ment to be played" dont run properly or as well on non-nvidia hardware, in some cases it just takes a little trickery to get them to work properly, example , that old tigerwoods golf game that ran in 3d accelerated mode at high res if u had an nvidia card, but if you had ANY other card it wouldnt run in anything but software mode at low res, but if you used an app to change the ID the game saw for your card to any nvidia card the game would run the same on ati cards and the like as it did on nvidia cards.

or gothic3, the games STUNNING if you play it in a ways, but its got querks in the gfx if your on ati gfx, ones u dont have to deal with if your on nvidia, BUT you can edit the config files manualy and fix them all pretty easly(as well as enabling multi cpu support!!!!!)

this stuff is VERY common, and i can see intel eventuly bullying game companys who want to use havoc or who want to upgrade/update the havoc they already are using into supporting intel platforms better then amd/ati/nvidia offerings, but then it will just come down to the game devs/companys saying "fuck it" and using another engine OR making their own.

but i see this ending up like alot of other intel aquisitions have in the past, it will last a few years then intel will eather sell it off or kill it, or kill off the market use of it then sell it off(they did this with chips and tech gfx chips for example, chips alot of companys used for onboard gfx back in the day specly for laptops)

and to those of you who want to see amd fail and are just sure they are going to tank, you need to look at the past and also take some economics and buisness corses, amd is hurting at the moment due to debt from buying ATI, but that was EXPECTED and they KNEW WHAT THEY WHERE GETTING INTO, they took a short term hit to give themselves a long term benifit.

the problem is that many/most of you have VERY western/american thinking, its all about the here and now, when if you saw it from say the japanese point of view you wouldnt be worried about today as much as years from now, the japanese have OWNED us for that reasion more then any other, they will take a loss now to gain market share and drive the compotition out of buisness then they will sit back and make up the losses once they get production costs down.

example look at the TV(television) it was an american invention, then the japanese started making black and white sets and selling them below cost in the US, as time went on they bought us tv makers that where failing, and by the time they effectivly owned the market they had gotten cost down so that they where making back all the $ they had lost by selling the early models blow cost, its all about how you look at things and how you plan ahead, intel was VERY shortsighted with the p4, they wanted to get as much out of a bad design as they could as quickly as possable, on the otherhand the athlon(all version from classic to k8) was a VERY forword looking design, really if you look at the k8 of today its not all that diffrent from the first athlons that hit the market, amd just refined it and added fetures, and yet many years later intels dumped the crappy poorly conceved p4 nutburst core for one that was around when athlon first came out(p6 core, used in the p3,p-m and now core2 chips), and now amd is bringing out a redesigned chip they dubed the k10, nobody heres seen one yet, and no benches have been posted, but again, this is a very eastern way of dealing with things( i know amd isnt japnese but their buisness model seems to be ) keep things close to the hip till your ready to start selling them.

amd never has put out benches b4 a chip was ready for market/sale, intel has for years put out info months before things where avalable, remmber the early p4ee chips, the ones that they ended up having to microcode fix because they had errors(because they where based on the xeon cores that had the same issues) but they put out benches b4 the microcode changes, and for good reasion, because once patched the chips lost a good bit of performance, quite frustrating for ppl who preordered them!!!!!

blah, as i said b4 we are not likely to see any real changes in the short term, but in the next few years i can see there being some dark changes in havoc.

oh and from what i been hearing the intel cards may not be for desktop use, they may be prof gfx cards like the stuff 3dlabs made b4 creative killed them(dumbasses should have had 3dlabs make desktop and gaming cards......stupid creative!!!)
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