July 12^th, 2005 (7:53pm) - Havok, a supplier of cross-platform middleware solutions for game developers, has announced that it is in development with new software technology for its middleware products that will help game developers use the built-in power and scalability of multi-core and multi-threaded next generation game consoles and graphics technology from manufacturers such as AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony.

Next generation game systems will offer built-in scalability in the form of multi-core and multi-processor hardware that will be standard in consumer game systems shipping in the next 12 months. Havok’s HydraCore software technology is designed to help game developers tap into the true power of these systems, by distributing real-time computation of physics and character animations flexibly and evenly across multiple processors.

HydraCore is an adaptive middleware technology that will allow game developers to flexibly assign and remove threads from the computationally-heavy tasks that next-generation games will require – from computing physics simulations for dynamic and destructible worlds, to helping game characters respond more intelligently to each other and their environments. HydraCore accelerates these elements of game-play by dividing up the work load and dispatching it to any number of central or secondary processing units such as the AMD Athlon 64 processor family. HydraCore ensures Havok-powered games can harvest the native scalability of the next wave of consumer PC game platforms – without requiring specialized add-on hardware.

HydraCore will support all next-generation game systems that offer multi-core and multi-threaded hardware capabilities, including PCs and next-generation video game platforms from Sony and Microsoft. HydraCore is also designed to gracefully support non-multi-core or single-threaded game environments to ensure the widest possible deployment options to today’s largest game developers.