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Quake and a thought experiment

The Quake 3 code was released today, I have been thinking a lot lately about game AI and how AI concepts can be pushed within games. Game AI is very good but more powerful AI requires more processing power that would slow down other elements of the game. So this has set me thinking why no one has created a PCI card thats for AI, rather than adding more memory or processing is actually dedicated hardware (say a card version of a CAM). While the card would not be used as much as a graphics card it would appeal to game fans (and could be added to say an XBOX or PS) seeking game AI 100's of times more powerful.

Posted: Aug 20 2005, 08:25 PM by astopford | with 4 comment(s)

Comments

Matthijs van der Vleuten said:

Don't you mean a PCI card?
# August 20, 2005 4:40 PM

Trent said:

"While the card would not be used as much as a graphics card it would appeal to game fans.."

That's the problem. There is no certainty that the card will be adopted outside of the high-end gamer circle. One thing that is certain is the high cost in developing the device and the long period of time to come up with a standard. I said standard because there should be a common interface on this AI module. What can happen this module will appear in software form. An example of this is the Havok physics engine, and there had been discussions that physics calculations in future games will be so intense that a separated dedicated GPU will be put into place.
# August 20, 2005 11:17 PM

John St. Clair said:

I think its more likely that this would be a specialized application within a physics processing card, which appear to be arriving soon:

http://www.ageia.com/technology.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21648

# August 23, 2005 3:31 AM

Tim Drinkhill said:

According to this post from Wired, some researchers from the University of Southern California have come up with an interesting twist using a mixture of Wifi, motion detection and AI...

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,68548,00.html
# August 25, 2005 3:40 AM