Intel bought Havok & apparently we are all doomed. DOOMED!

Posted By: Steve McBarnes - 11:47:26 Mon, September 17, 2007

The sky is falling and it is being rendered in real time by Intel's Havok physics engine! Run! Run for your lives! Lock your doors and board up your windows! Kiss your pets goodbye!

Some people are a little too analytical and paranoid when it comes to business deals like this. From [H]ard|OCP:

"Intel’s own gaming GPU is soon to be in the market and now Intel owns the biggest and most widely adopted solution when it comes to software physics and likely soon to be hardware accelerated physics? I would suggest that there is a lot of discussion this morning at NVIDIA and AMD alike. Intel just pulled off a coup in the discrete graphics market and has not even entered it yet. NVIDIA is looking to have more to lose than any company right now in this equation. Its "platform" has no CPU and just likely lost a physics processor adaptation. It will be interesting to see what becomes of all of this. Did Intel just get the bargaining chip they need to bring SLI to Intel motherboard chipsets? Does Intel even care anymore?"

I am not worried. Intel will "share" Havok with Nvidia and AMD. I think they will all play nice with each other for the most part. If something really bad happened and Intel took all the CPU/GPU/Physics business for themselves, wouldn't the government step up and prevent them from becoming a monopoly? I know the government would not like the idea of buying all their PC hardware from one company that could charge them whatever they want.

So what do you guys think about all this?

17 Comments

Monday, September 17, 2007 12:47:24 PM

anonymousD
n00b

well,seeing that intel got busted in court in japan and europe over the 'dont buy amd' deal but not here at home, i say its reasonable to say were doomed. the only salvation would be amd getting nvidia under its wing else inhell will loose money over a few quarters long enough,tough,for either of the competitors to go down under.no, not in aussie land :D

Monday, September 17, 2007 1:57:45 PM

Radiator
Senior Member

I'm not sure what to think , but it certainly is not good news .

Monday, September 17, 2007 2:38:39 PM

anonymous
guest

Damn you Intel :S

Monday, September 17, 2007 3:57:15 PM

Gadwall
n00b

I don't trust Intel to play nicely. Their history at attempting aggressive market control makes Microsoft look like a non-profit organization. I'm worried, look how long it took for the lawsuits with Microsoft to get anywhere. If Intel planned on sharing or working with Nvidia and AMD then why would they bother buying Havok anyway.

Monday, September 17, 2007 6:33:51 PM

anonymous
guest

Intell must be stopped.......

Monday, September 17, 2007 7:41:11 PM

anonymous
guest

Intel's agenda:
Today..Havok
Tomorrow..NVIDIA
The day after tomorrow...The World!

Monday, September 17, 2007 8:15:06 PM

Who says Intel will use Havoc to furthur their GPU physics? They could just furthur physics processing for their CPU side.
But with AMD going down, we ALL have to be fearful of Intel.
And no, I don't think the government is going take Intel down just because they don't like them.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 3:52:56 AM

Some Random Dude
guest

I hate it when one company bursts out to rule ... Intel is certainly on there way, and even though i had no problem with AMD Before, when they got ATI, it began to worry me too ... Now that Intel is doing it, there is a larger competition going on between AMD and Intel, nVidia is seriously F**ked ... LoL !!! No jokes but soon AMD Will release its Bundled Gaming PC, and Intel will be doing the same, while nVidia is like check out our 10800 GTX and ULTRA, there super expensive and are no longer supported on AMD or Intel related motherboards ... This is really g@y, Intel and AMD should go back to what they used to do best, and nVidia and ATI should go back to what they used to do best, freaken everything in the world is becoming centralised ... i wouldn't be suprised if sooner or later we end up with government centralising, destroying the democracy and freedom of the people to vote ... its like we go from Imperialism to democracy, and now were heading towards centralised everything ... crazy world we live in, we never learn from the past ... Where the hell am i going with this seriously, how is this related to Intel :P

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:54:58 AM

anonymous
guest

Were dooooomed *weeping*

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 4:39:58 PM

anonymousD
n00b

yep, were f**ed :D

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 5:17:20 PM

anonymousHC
guest

Indeed, we are Screwed! Intel makes Microsoft and possibly Apple look like babies... I won't say any further, I don't want to be branded a "mac hater"... ... ... ;)

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 8:28:23 PM

anonymousD
n00b

hell no! we all cough love cough macs here :D

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 1:05:52 PM

nonymous
guest

Intel recently unveiled its new graphics chip last week called the Larrabee.
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/techsemis/10380200_2.html
The article mentions it will be used for high-end graphics and will put it into direct competition with Nvidia. Clearly, the acquistion of Havok coincides with the release of their new physics engines.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 2:19:57 PM

Radiator
Senior Member

Yep... we all love macs here LOL .
It's good for CG work but for gaming , it's not such a bright idea to use it .

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 8:39:12 PM

don't hate me
guest

Hmmmm..... Let's see, what to say. Oh yeah, DORKS! Any quick CPU-Z comparison of an AMD and Intel CPUs will quickly show you who shares technology with who! Show me a single competing AMD processor that does not run the instruction sets an Intel CPU runs.... (i.e. Athlon 64 run SSE, SS2 and SSE3 compared to a Pentium 4). The ONLY instruction set not run by an AMD CPU is SSE4 which only relates to Hyper-Threading code. Intel was the first to develop 90nm fabrication process and everyone mysteriously managed to come up with the same process six months later. Then Intel made the 65nm process possible, again everyone came up with the same design six months later. The current 45nm process is the first one that Intel is holding on to. And I would argue rightfully so. If a company spends billions of dollars in R&D shouldn't the resulting information belong to them?

Next time you all want to blast a 35 year old company do some research first so you don't sound like a bunch of noobs. I for one thinks it's gonna be great to have Intels kind of R&D behind a dedicated physics processor.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 8:49:55 PM

don't hate me
guest

Personally I'd be more worried if nVidia had made the purchase. I still remember all the tech they shelved when they purchased 3Dfx...

Thursday, September 20, 2007 12:34:18 AM

anonymousD
n00b

you must be getting a good salary :D

Add Comment

This is a moderated comment list. All posts are subject to my personal approval. Please limit your comments to the subject of the article. Don't (for example) start asking questions about your video card here, you'll get a much better response in the forums.

Anonymous posts are allowed, but I encourage you to sign up for the forums and post comments under your name.