AMD initiates to expand real-time physics usage

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.: AMD and Pixelux Entertainment, a provider in Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) technology, today announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine.

By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms, said a press release.

The latest graphics technologies, like the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of GPUs, offer incredible visual fidelity and high performance physics simulation by taking the next step in realistically animating how rendered game objects move, deform and break.

“Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs,” said Eric Demers, chief technology officer for graphics at AMD.

“By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.”

As the latest software developer to take advantage of ATI Stream technology to leverage multi-core CPUs and GPUs to accelerate execution of highly parallel functions, Pixelux would enable game developers to offer improved performance and interactivity across a broad range of OpenCL capable PCs, said the release.

AMD is also actively pursuing support of Bullet Physics via the DirectCompute API in DirectX 11, it added.

Mitchell Bunnell, CEO of Pixelux said, “Pixelux wants to ensure that our technology can take advantage of the computing resources that any particular hardware platform offers without locking in our users to any single platform. By working with AMD to run our software in OpenCL we stay true to that goal.”