Physics engine Havok is used frequently in games and by platforms – from PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Havok is since 2008 owned wholly by Intel and it has now acquired Trinigy, which is just as spread as Havok between the game platforms.
Physics entered the discussion for serious when tiny company Ageia and its PhysX appeared on the market, which was then acquired by NVIDIA. PhysX is now a proprietary technology only available to NVIDIA’s graphics card, but there are alternative technologies, like the largest one Havok, or the physics library Bullet.
Trinigy Vision Engine, the latest game engine from company
Havok, which in turn is owned by Intel, has acquired Trinigy for an unknown amount. Trinigy was a standalone company that does no game development, but only supplies the engine to many games and like Havok has a broad support across most game platforms imaginable.
Exactly what Intel intends to do with Trinigy, but with the growing focus on graphics integrated into the processor it is not a poor guess that it wants more games optimized for its own solutions. Ivy Bridge will increase to 16 exeuction units, unlike 12 in Sandy Bridge, besides it will also have DirectX 11. With Haswell, Intel has said it will offer fast enough graphics in notebooks to render discrete graphics cards useless.
Physics isn’t just used in games, it is also used by applications for photo and 3D, something Intel will bring more attention to in the future when it has support for OpenCL 1.1 with Ivy Bridge, which will open up for a more heterogeneous solution like AMD Llano.
Source: Trinigy
