ATI’s GPU physics partner is… Havok?

ATI parent company AMD has revealed that it is working with Havok in order to optimise physics processing on both AMD CPUs and ATI GPUs, reports TG Daily.

ATI’s rival Nvidia has committed to Ageia’s PhysX for its GPU physics processing, purchasing the company last year and recently making available a version that works with its CUDA GPU processing interface present on all 8- and 9-series cards and above.

This situation has lead to ATI partnering with Havok for its physics, despite the fact that Havok was purchased by Intel last year – AMD’s biggest rival.

Speaking to TG Daily, AMD’s director of product marketing, platform and gaming technologies division Godfrey Cheng said that Havok’s technology was considered "very mature" and scaled well across AMD’s multi-core chips. He also said that Nvidia’s PhysX strategy doesn’t match AMD’s open approach philosophy, while Havok does.