Intel Buys Irish Company Havok

By Max Brenn
12:19, September 16th 2007

Intel's involvement in the gaming-industry is no mystery to anyone these days, but apparently with the introduction of multi-core processors the Santa Clara behemoth has plans for an even greater expansion in this lucrative market, expected to reach a value of $18 billion by the end of this year.

Intel is already manufacturing graphic processor units (GPUs) which it later integrates in the motherboards specially designed for its CPUs. However, with AMD's acquisition last year of Canada-based GPU manufacturer ATI, competition in this domain got sharper.

Intel's move to acquire Havok has deep ramifications in both the gaming and the movie industries. Specifically for the gaming industry, the Havok engine, used in blockbuster titles like "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," will now gain a strong lead in front of high-profile competitors like the Unreal Engine (developed by Epic Games) or CryENGINE 2 (to be showcased at its full potential on September 25, when the long expected demo for the PC game Crysis will be rolled out). The new Havok, which will continue to operate as an independent business working with its customers in developing digital media content (but with the status of "wholly owned Intel subsidiary") will integrate Intel's innovation and technology leadership in the creation of digital media. This will benefit the gaming industry as a whole, but also digital media creators in the movie industry. Havok products have already been used to create special effects in movies such as "Poseidon," "The Matrix," "Troy," "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

"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."

"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."
The Havok Physics, better knows as Havok, is designed for computer and video games by allowing interaction between objects or other characters in real-time. By using dynamical simulation, Havok allows for more lifelike worlds and animation, such as ragdoll physics. The company has also released a Havok Animation and Havok FX, which uses Shader Model 3.0 on consumer GPUs for effects physics such as smoke.

Havok was founded in Dublin in 1998, and the first software development kit (SDK) was released in 2000. Now the Intel subsidiary has offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Stockholm, Calcutta, Munich and Tokyo. The Havok engin now works on the Microsoft Windows platform, Xbox and Xbox 360, Nintendo's GameCube and Wii, Sony's PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, Apple's Mac OS X, and on Linux. The engine itself is written in C/C++, and remains fairly portable to any system with a compatible C or C++ compiler.

Havok Physics 2 SDK has been licensed by over 70 clients and shipped in over 50 titles.