These are great days for digital musicians. Brawny new multi-core, multi-thread processors have caught up with even the most demanding artists, including digital musician Justin Lassen. Well-connected and in high demand, Lassen is living the dream: creating compositions that play in the convergent space where game industry and music industry merge. To be sure, this is not your father's soundtrack. But creating high-end audio requires tons of raw-and smart-compute power. Recently, Lassen upgraded to the Intel® Core™ i7 processor Extreme Edition. Read why he was blown away.

Parallel programming has a reputation for being difficult because, well … it is. Multiple execution threads must be run in parallel, and every thread has to have an effect on at least one other thread. If the threads interfere with one another or distort the algorithm, defects will creep into the program. And these defects are difficult to locate and-even more maddening-to fix. In this article, Andrew Binstock, senior contributing editor for InfoWorld and columnist for SD Times, examines the primary places where threading bugs lurk and explains how to avoid them. His tools of choice: the Intel® Media SDK and Intel® Thread Checker.

Golf games for the PC are about to experience a revolution thanks to EA Sports, with DVD-based titles yielding to an Online-Only model. EA Sports' new game, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR* Online, or TWO, will be playable strictly through your browser. Which brings up this question: Will great gameplay be accessible on the spectrum of desktop and laptop platforms? The short answer is yes. With the help of Intel software engineers, EA Sports optimized TWO for the broad range of Intel hardware, including Clarkdale and Arrandale, part of the Intel® Core™ processor family and based on 32-nm process technology. The result is a scalable game that's coded to take advantage of any Intel® platform... and increase EA Sports' audience share.

Maintaining the "performance partnership" between hardware and software is a real challenge, as change occurs at breakneck speed. Intel Threading Building Blocks can take some of the strain out of meeting that challenge, particularly for non-uniform memory access (NUMA) platforms, such as the new generation of Intel® Microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem. This paper explains the special challenges - and performance gains - of NUMA platforms over symmetric multiprocessor platforms, and explores Intel TBB features that are of particular importance for NUMA platforms. Scalability studies of benchmarks run on three NUMA systems is also included.

Continuing from Part 1, Dr. Michael J. Gourlay begins delving into the equations that define the motion of fluids (non-linear PDE's combined with initial and boundary value constraints). He then offers numerical techniques to simulate fluid motion, as well as ways to parallelize numerical codes for multi-core hardware.

Recreating what happens when you drop a rock on a man's foot is fairly straight forward. Recreating what happens when you drop the same rock into a bucket of water is far more complex. Fluids require specialized simulation techniques because they have so much freedom of motion and take the shape of their container. This paper takes a look at both field- and particle-based systems of fluid simulation, including the properties of fluids (pressure, viscosity, density, and temperature) and their governing equations. A practical review of differential calculus is presented, as well as Eulerian (fixed-coordinate) and Lagrangian (moving-coordinate) views of the fluid momentum and vorticity equations.

Raising the bar of software development has also raised consumers' expectations. Gamers expect to see each new game become more complex and intelligent, challenging developers to push the envelope. Computer-controlled AI has evolved to accomplish this mammoth task. In this article, get an architectural overview of the new API for the Intel Media SDK and how it can be used to incorporate AI into game design. Includes the various types of AI systems; the roles AI can play in games; and decision making in simple rules-based systems, finite state machines (FMS), and adaptive AI, which attempts to predict behavior and is key in fighting and strategy games.

Perception equals reality. And in games, the more that can be perceived, the more realistic the experience is... both for the player and for the game entities. This article discusses the challenges an AI faces in perceiving and navigating a complex environment, and how those challenges can be addressed. Included are examinations of using ray tracing to emulate sight, and how your AI can perceive temporary entities (such as bullet holes, pools of blood and footprints). It then discusses how your AI can navigate the environment, including the use of multi-threading for crashing, turning, and remembering. Includes code samples.

By mid-2005, a technology shift was fully underway: replacing single-core architecture with multi-core. For BioWare, this posed a very real dilemma. Already a year into developing Dragon Age: Origins, they realized it would be released onto a very different platform than most PC gamers had used. As the saying goes, "change or die." So they changed. Working with Intel engineers and using Intel® development tools, BioWare went back to the drawing board and embraced parallelism from all sides (including understanding the pitfalls that are the bain of an ISV's existence). The results are speaking for themselves.

This article presents a new Intel-created methodology that significantly optimized the performance of DreamWorks Animation’s rendering, animation, and special effects applications without any source code or build-system changes. And you can use it, too. Specific to the Linux* environment, the methodology is based on preloading highly optimized libraries at run-time using the Linux* loader’s LD_PRELOAD environment variable. Coupling this technique with optimization tools such as Intel® Threading Building Blocks (Intel® TBB), common bottlenecks are removed and impressive performance gains are seen.

We respond to fire on a primal level and it sparks our adrenaline. But when it comes to realistically rendering it, the challenges are many. This white paper demonstrates a technique for realistically animating a forest fire. It describes the creation and implementation of the grammar and parser used to create the trees, and examines the Fire System which uses the Smart Particle Engine to set the trees on fire. Includes screen shots and diagrams, sample scripts, and grammar and parser details.

The Intel Media SDK greatly reduces the time it takes a developer to accelerate content, yet also ensures the best playback experience on the platform. This overview looks at the architecture of the SDK's new API, including how it encodes, decodes, and preprocesses video while determining whether the CPU or GPU is best suited to support the request. Additionally, it demonstrates how these functions work with coded bit streams and raw video frames and support preprocessing functions such as color conversion, resizing, de-noising, pull-down, and scene detection.

This paper looks at how the Intel® Media SDK was integrated with a leading video authoring application, Adobe* Premiere Pro* CS4 for Microsoft Windows*. Presented are details on specific integration points, key design considerations, and supplemental component usage. Additionally, it looks at the steps involved in integrating these two programs, and includes screen shots and sample code.

Software companies whose products create or play back digital video content typically spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with the intricacies of encoding and decoding for a variety of hardware platforms. This time-consuming exercise often deters development teams from more innovative pursuits. This solution brief looks at how Nero, Sonic Solutions, Corel, and CyberLink used the new Intel Media SDK and the opportunities it's created for them.

Game physics is at the heart of any modern game engine which employs the laws of physics to simulate life-like movement and interaction between objects, such as rigid and deformable bodies, cloth, and water. Game physics applications are very compute and memory intensive. The ever growing quest for a high degree of realism requires more complex physics algorithms and also larger datasets. To meet the demands of game physics applications requires a computer architecture which can deliver high floating point performance and memory bandwidth. However, general-purpose many-core architectures are quickly evolving to overcome these constraints. Larrabee is one such highly-threaded many-core architecture. It consists of an array of multiple IA Intel processor cores, each augmented with a 16-wide vector processor unit. In this paper, we analyze several key game physics applications. We show how Larrabee’s extensive thread and data parallelism are well suited for a broad set of physics algorithms. We show how these algorithms parallelize and map to Larrabee architecture and achieve good parallel speedup with the number of cores.

In this second of the two-part series originally printed in Game Developer magazine, Noel Llopis takes data baking from basic concept to hard (and common) reality of cross-platform coding. From bools and ints to byte-endianness, Noel looks at how different target platforms treat data in memory and how to adjust your data baking so it's consistently usable, even with all those rules. Happy baking!

In its most common form, the process of baking transforms raw ingredients into something yummy to eat. (Who can resist fresh cookies, warm from the oven?) It's similar with data baking: it transforms raw data into something your game can readily "eat" (ok, consume), thus improving load time. And it's a big deal, because it can impact the development process and the player's experience. In this article originally printed in Game Developer magazine, veteran game programmer Noel Llopis serves up the basic steps of data baking, and demonstrates how this often overlooked process is the recipe for fast starts and smoother game play.

No matter what platform you work on, developing a game can be like trying to build something on quicksand: Somewhere between the time you start designing the game and the day it launches, the landscape you thought you were developing for shifts. With an emphasis on the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, this white paper helps developers navigate the complex landscape of processor architecture, system performance, multiple threads, and application scalability.

Wondering what makes the Intel Core i7 mobile processor unique? Get the facts and figures that distinguish this performance powerhouse.

The Resident Evil franchise from Capcom has been entertaining thrill-seeking gamers for years. The latest incarnation, Resident Evil 5, has been re-engineered to take maximum advantage of the capabilities of Intel Core i7 processors. On-the-go gamers with laptops powered by the Intel Core i7 mobile processor have just cause to celebrate.

Realism takes on added dimensions in the latest release of Operation Flashpoint from Codemasters, Dragon Rising, with intricately detailed graphics and rich sound. Much of the realism and fluid motion in this riveting game comes from optimization and tuning work performed in collaboration with Intel. Gamers who hate to leave the action behind will find a laptop powered by the Intel Core i7 mobile processor a suitable companion.

When it comes to chasing down vapors, slimers, and poltergeists, stuttering gameplay is not an option. Yet it happened in the creation of Ghostbusters: the Video Game in a scene that is foundational to fans of the movie and the game: the library. Read how Terminal Reality CTO, Mark Randel and Intel engineers broke the bottleneck using Intel® GPA.

Any game engine worth its salt must prove equal to the challenges of the day, which in an era of hyper-realistic 3-D environments includes multiplayer tournaments, intricately rendered fi rst-person shooters, and extensible characters, weapons, and maps. Epic Games consistently stays in the fat of the barrel—the point of dynamic equilibrium in the technology curve—taking advantage of strong trends, such as multi-processor advances and parallelism, to hone their competitive edge.

The fourth issue of Intel® Visual Adrenaline magazine explores how game developers strive to create the highest possible level of immersion for players. DiRT*2* offers up a more believable and fun ride with enhanced vehicle-handling dynamics. Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond created through a collaboration of game developers and NASA scientists and engineers, explores the future of virtual space exploration set in a unmatched lunar moonscapes and debris from nearby meteor impacts. Solid-state drives from Intel deliver massive volumes of input and output operations per second—a huge productivity boost for developers. Mythic Entertainment’s server farm is home to the many creatures that inhabit Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning. A review of techniques for scaling ambient animations and improving the gaming experience wrap up issue four.

Along with mentioning a strange rash, a sure way to kill a conversation is to bring up the topic of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). But for those who wish to create fantastic-looking clouds, explosions, smoke, and other game effects, nothing could be more exciting!

Millions of potential gamers are running their systems on Intel® Graphics chipsets, and the projected numbers are steadily increasing. To better reach this ginormous audience segment, game developers are tuning their games for integrated graphics. Gas Powered Games is one of those developers. Read how they worked with Intel - and used Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers - to turn the dials on Demigod and achieve optimum play performance on Intel Graphics chipsets.

The purpose of this project was to investigate how we could effectively render a realistic ocean scene on differing graphics solutions while trying to provide a current working class set of data to the graphics community. Given the complexities involved with rendering an ocean as well as fog effects we chose to start by using a projected grid concept, because of its realistic qualities, as our baseline.

In the fifth issue of Intel® Visual Adrenaline magazine we feature how Dreamworks Animation is configuring their animation pipeline; how Justin Lassen and a collaborative set of CG artists are creating a new art form; how HDFilm’s Chadam is opening the way for game engines; and how Intel is expanding our support of CG artists through the new Artist and Animator Resources Center.

Mike Burrows, Senior Graphics Software Architect Manager for Intel, has his sights on the far-reaching strategic view, determining how upcoming technologies like Larrabee can help take developers into the future.

For Mike Abrash, Rad Game Tools programmer and graphics-programming expert, it was simply common sense: You don't rasterize in software if you're trying to do GPU-class graphics, even on a high-performance part such as Larrabee. Turns out, he was wrong. In this second article by Dr. Dobb's, Mike takes a close look at how the Larrabee team at RAD applied Larrabee New Instructions to rasterization and, in the process, redesigned their implementation to take advantage of the strengths of Larrabee's CPU-based architecture.

Artificial intelligence (AI) drives gameplay—whether you’re talking about a complex system of AI or a simple scripting engine. To really maximize your AI’s potential, it needs to utilize the entire CPU and this means threading. This article examines how to thread a simple AI and some of the challenges in writing an AI that truly scales with multi-core CPUs.

Understanding what tools to use in order to take advantage of multiple cores and multiple threads makes a giant leap forward in Intel® Visual Adrenaline magazine, issue #3. Wolfenstein* makes a triumphant return thanks to stencil shadows, Autodesk® describes a collection of new tools available for developers, Empire: Total War* takes to the realistic seas, and a digital music giant describes handling raw power using the Cakewalk tool.

The second issue of Visual Adrenaline magazine explores the enhanced realism possible with the latest visual computing advances—in stereoscopic 3D, multi-player gaming, and CG animation. The alliance between Intel and DreamWorks, resulting in the InTru 3D™ brand, aims to bring bring incredible stereoscopic 3D experiences to audiences. Other topics highlight gaming development, the latest wrinkles in digital art, and bringing a benign monster to life.

Game optimization tips, unlocking the secrets of new graphics architectures, unusual game-engine applications, a revolutionary custom tool for digital content creation, the visual effects that brought Attila the Hun to life, the happy musings of a digital artist—point and click and it’s yours in Intel® Visual Adrenaline

Neversoft co-founder Mick West presents a thought-provoking look at improving the believability of AI opponents in games by upping their use of “intelligent mistakes”, in a piece originally written for Game Developer magazine.

The Ghostbusters* phenomenon has spanned 25 years since the movie release in 1984, but the iconic characters and "No Ghosts" logo are still going strong. Read how the technology pros at Terminal Reality brought the game to life, working with Intel to get Ghostbusters*: The Video Game running optimally on a wide range of PC platforms. And remember... don't cross the streams.

Using network programming as a comparison, this article intends to give you an introduction to threading so that you will understand the basics of threading in a Microsoft Windows* environment.

A study of the problem of providing realistic illumination at high frame rates, something commonly achieved through approximations known as screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO). The authors describe a related method called screen space directional occlusion (SSDO), which handles light angles better, includes as least one bounce of indirect light, works with global illumination, and requires only slightly more computational overhead.

This paper introduces RTfact--an attempt to bring the different aspects of ray tracing together without sacrificing the performance benefits of hand-tuned single-purpose implementations. RT-fact is a template library consisting of packet-centric components combined into an efficient ray-tracing framework.

An excerpt from the Intel Visual Adrenaline Magazine, Issue 3 2009, this article interviews the three Intel 2008 Game Demo Contest winners.

According to Mercury Research, the dominance of integrated graphics over discrete graphics is nearly 2:1, and that ratio is expected to grow substantially over the next several years. This paper describes how NetDevil and Multiverse Network have positioned their businesses to take best advantage of the large, worldwide installed base of PCs using integrated graphics.

Read up on Intel’s Larrabee project with Tom Forsyth, the key software and hardware architect responsible for bringing a new generation of graphics to the games of the future. Forsyth is a veteran game developer and a leading DirectX* expert, and readers anxious to hear about next-generation possibilities will appreciate his insights into where Larrabee will take the rasterization pipeline.

Five years ago, Michael Abrash took a chance. A programmer for Rad Game Tools*, he needed a lerp instruction (yes, lerp) and decided to ask Intel to make one. That request forged a lasting collaboration between Rad Game Tools, Intel, and its GPU-class architecture, code-named Larrabee. With its many cores, many threads, and a new vector instruction set, Abrash explains what Larrabee is, why it’s necessary, and how it can give your graphics wings.

Empire: Total War* takes to the waves with real-time naval battles made possible with today’s tools. SEGA’s development team describes how they modeled wind and weather effects on choppy seas to bring the seafaring events to life. The team used key development tools from Intel to make sure the CPU and GPU work well together.

Wolfenstein is back, reborn with better, stronger, and faster tools while staying true to its roots. See how Raven Software engineers adapted one of the great first person shooters to multi-core technology, devoting two threads to the Havok Physics* engine. Thanks to their efforts, players can enter a new supernatural world where better weapons mean better gameplay.

Because of the geometric complexity, rendering realistic grass in real-time is difficult, especially on consumer graphics hardware. This article introduces the concept of geometry instancing with Direct3D* 10 APIs and shows how it can be used to implement realistic grass on consumer graphics hardware.

With the advent of multiple cores within a processor, the need to create a parallel game engine has become increasingly important. Although it is still possible to focus primarily on only the GPU and have a single-threaded game engine, the advantages of using all the processors on a system, whether CPU or GPU, can give the user a much greater experience. This white paper covers the basic methods for creating and optimizing a multi-core game engine. It also describes the state manager and messaging mechanism that keeps data in sync and offers several tips for optimizing parallel execution. Multiple block diagrams are used to depict theoretical overviews for managing tasks and states, interfacing with scenes, objects, and tasks, and then initializing, loading, and looping within synchronized threads.

This document provides development hints and tips to ensure that your customers will have a great experience playing your games and running other interactive 3D graphics applications. This document also describes the Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator used in the Intel® 4 Series Chipsets (the Intel® 4500, X4500, and X4500HD GMAs) with a focus on performance analysis on Microsoft DirectX* and includes a section detailing performance analysis with the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzer (Intel® GPA). These chipsets are used in desktop G41, G43, and G45 and mobile GM45 systems.

From Sundance to Bollywood, a new generation of popular filmmaking is challenging the old guard of big-budget movies. Using the power of multi-core processors, creating high-quality digital media in real time is not only a new reality, it’s slashing timelines and lowering budgets.

When designing immersive visual experiences, graphicists want environments that look and feel like the real world. This article offers a real-time demonstration of creating compelling, deep ocean waves. To improve performance, a multi-threaded workload is used on a multi-core machine.

OGRE3D (a.k.a. Ogre) is one of the most popular open source 3D engines available. But as great as Ogre is, the one drawback is that it does not take advantage of multi-core systems… unless you thread it. This paper presents three different alternatives to threading the Ogre render system.

Producing animated feature films presents daunting challenges for storytellers, but not nearly as daunting as those posed by stereoscopic 3D moviemaking. Enabling moviemaking in S3D requires rethinking many cinematic conventions, and then building tools and processes that help storytellers exercise their craft. With Maya 2009, Autodesk has done just that.

Creating the illusion of 3D has been around since the dawn of cinema. (Who didn't beg their parents for a pair of those awesome glasses?) And with the exponential advances in stereoscopic technologies, 3D films are enjoying a renaissance. But achieving this immersive visual experience takes ginormous amounts of digital images and processing power. Read how DreamWorks and Intel partnered to create a 21st Century method for S3D production. Can you say Monsters vs. Aliens*?

The simulation of ocean waves provides a significant challenge to computer graphics. Offline rendering yields phenomenal results, but the computational cost is high. The ability to generate waves in real time that resemble actual ocean waves is highly desirable. In this article an implementation of a real-time shallow ocean wave simulation using Microsoft DirectX 10 is described. The simulation produces a variety of wave shapes and allows the designer to tune wave parameters in real time.

TDVision Systems credits the Intel® Software Partner Program for cutting its software optimization time in half, guiding its development process, and providing the visibility needed to attract the attention of much larger partners and customers.

In "Pixel Fantasma: Predicting the Future of Gaming," Intel’s own Pete Baker prognosticates on the ways in which technology is shaping the industry.

In "Looks Aren’t Everything: Making Games Act Real," Intel’s own Roger Chandler talks about revulsion toward robots and intelligent behaviors in games.

With a nod to the past and a clear focus on the future, Intel is setting out to define a practical yet visionary path for visual computing. The swiftly evolving technology underlying visual computing offers considerable opportunities for those who harness it. The engineers, strategists, and visionaries at Intel serve as technology enablers, helping our partners, customers, and the developer community realize the benefits of new architectures, chipsets, and software solutions.

Video applications thrive on processor power and MainConcept twists the dials on the performance machine to deliver screamingly fast video technology products. See how they turn up the G-forces.

3-D production pipelines benefit dramatically from MAXON’s highly tuned 64-bit animation software, CINEMA 4D, optimized for multi-core processor platforms. The secrets are revealed.

"Crysis: Transcending the Game" looks at the revolutionary impact of modding and an extensible universe on gaming development.

"Globetrotting Air Guitarists, Rage On" profiles the latest laptop-ready release of Guitar Hero* III: Legends of Rock.

Intel® Software Partner Program member, The Multiverse Network, Inc., strives to optimize its virtual world development platform for both mainstream and high-end graphics, as well as for present and future multi-core processors.

"Ray Tracing Enters the Spotlight" reveals the story behind a 30-year old technique that is currently transforming gaming and animation.

"Genetic Genius" is the story of José María Andrés and the imaginative CG creations that come out of his head.

The Intel® Software Partner Program guides The Game Creators toward the multi-core future for their FPS Creator X10* development environment.

Smoke is a tech demo that showcases a framework to support n-way threading of game technologies. By properly threading a game, it can have more accurate physics, smarter AI, more particles, and a faster frame-rate. Smoke demonstrates one way to achieve better games. All of the source code for Smoke is available for download.

Havok’s Jeff Yates has 15 years of experience managing the development of content creation tools, such as Autodesk’s 3ds Max* and Maya*. As vice president of product management at Havok, he deals directly with clients who have specific requirements and serves as the company’s public face for high-level product strategy. We caught up with Jeff to discuss Havok’s expansion into areas beyond physics, Havok’s underlying goals for middleware tools, game development’s focus on characters, and what he sees for the future of animation and behavior technology.

Chris Remo, editor with Gamasutra.com, conducted an interview with Orion Granatir, application engineer in the Intel Software and Services Group.

The Smoke demo, which highlights the scalability of a multi-threaded game engine architecture, includes a novel approach for creating procedural fire. In this article—the prelude to a comprehensive white paper about procedural trees and fire—we describe the mechanism used to create realistic fire and the corresponding internals, as well as the natural addition of the water effect.

Soft-body physics is an increasingly popular feature in videogames. Due to their computational intensity, soft-body physics are presently used sparingly to depict the movement of cloth, hair, and other flexible elements. This article shows how, with the additional processing power of a multi-core CPU, entire soft-body characters can be created using cloth simulation techniques. This article draws heavily from a tech demo called Pet Me.

How to Start a Multi-threading Relationship Hint: It begins with trust and communication

Download and review a ton of resources that will help you take advantage of the Intel Core i7 Processor Family, including white papers, technical specs, presentations, development tips and tricks, and conversations in forums and blogs.

"Multi-Threading Goo!: Optimizing PillowFort’s Game To Enter the 2008 Intel Game Demo Contest" unfolds the tale of a Netherlands-based game programmer as he masters multi-threading.

If you're facing the daunting task of rejiggering your games to take advantage of multiple cores, Smoke from Intel can provide relief. This dual-purpose framework and tech demo takes advantage of the latest advances in gaming software and computer hardware, emphasizing the advantages of correctly implemented multi-threaded gaming. Orion Granatir, a senior engineer with Intel, and Ryan Shrout, editor-in-chief at PC Perspective, take an in-depth look at Smoke and what it means to the world of game developers. Read the article to learn where to get the Smoke code.

"Planting Seeds for the Next Gaming Breakthrough" reveals Havok’s plan for mobilizing up-and-coming game developers by giving away Havok* Complete software for free.

An intricately detailed 3-D stadium opens for an architectural walkthrough in "Epic’s Unreal Engine Stops Playing Around."

"It’s Back, Badder Than Ever: Bionic Commando" witnesses Agent Spence resurrected in the latest version of the classic game.

Working closely with Intel application engineers, Ascaron extended the capabilities of Sacred 2 to ensure sharp graphics on the platform of choice—whether a tethered desktop machine with a high-end graphics board or a compact mobile computer with an integrated graphics chipset. Ascaron also enhanced their game model to embrace ad-hoc gaming, giving novice and casual users an entry path to simplify connectivity to the online universe and minimizing the difficulties in getting oriented to the game environment.

What do you say about a person who helped pioneer MMO gaming (Ultima Online*), has recently created an exciting MMO game (Tabula Rasa*), built a haunted house capable of terrifying even stoic adults (Britannia Manor), and is scheduled to make his first space flight in October, joining the team on the International Space Station?

Alex Garfield, executive director of Team Evil Geniuses (seriously, how cool is that?), got his hands on the new Intel® Core i7™ Processor Extreme Edition with the full intention of testing the snot out of it. And test he did. Take a read to see how the new processor performed with a notoriously PC-killing game.

For many of us, being wowed by special effects is the primary reason we watch films. Or, in the case of Gareth Edwards, make them. Read how Gareth has tossed out the preconceptions that traditionally hobble video production and created his own video effects solution on the latest platform innovations. The result? A nod from the BBC to create its epic, Attila the Hun. Not too shabby.

Conquer the world of extreme gaming with multi-core technology that accelerates performance to match your workload and delivers incredible gaming performance. The Intel® Core i7™ Processor Extreme Edition can not only take on today’s most complex and immersive games, but its also powerful enough to handle tomorrow’s gaming advances.

Ryan Shrout, the editor-in-chief at PC Perspective pcper.com), turns a critical eye on CPU and GPU designs, with a focus on their underlying technologies and the real-world benefits they may offer.

Accurately rendering volumes of tiny particles - such as the spray off an ocean or the haze in a smoky bar - have historically been created using a simple blend function. But there may be a better way. In this Gamasutra-sponsored paper, veteren programmer, Mike Krazanowski, defines a shader-technology method that results in more accurate rendering using fewer particles. Includes code samples.

Whereas ten years ago only servers and high-workstations contained multiple processors, today's PC desktops and laptops are, by default, multi-core processor machines. This technical paper provides an overview into using libraries as a low-cost method for preparing your games to run on multi-core processor machines.

Download this 16-page technical paper for upcoming Larrabee. A no-frills overview, this paper lays out the comprehensive model and application possibilities of the new many-core visual computing architecture. From the new software-rendering pipeline, a many-core programming model, and performance analysis, to schematics, processing overviews, and simulation studies, this paper offers a comprehensive understanding of the next-generation architecture for computer graphics.

Download this concise overview of the comprehensive tools and efficiencies you'll get from the Havok No-Charge PC Download. From collision detection and production-ready tools to animation compression and inverse kinematics, see how Havok Physics and Animation can can help you reach new levels of graphics and game-play.

This issue covers a wide range of technology advances, including Havok's real-world physics breakthroughs, behind-the-scenes digital movie making, and speculations about the Uncanny Valley hypothesis. (Don't know what that is? You will now.)

The thirteenth issue of Intel® Software Insight kicks off its shoes and lets out a harmonious wail as gaming takes center stage and technology mans the spotlight. The percolating energy inside this issue, keyed to the Game Developer Conference, illuminates the technology trends and programming innovation sparking interest throughout the gaming community.

Case study presentation on parallel dynamics for multi-threaded games.

This technical white paper presents a methodology that has been used to successfully thread many applications and discusses the tools that can assist you in developing multi-threaded applications.

Electrify your senses with this special Game Developer Conference edition of Intel® Software Insight magazine. From the caffeine-fueled development labs of leading game firms to the lofty heights of photo-realistic flight simulation, it’s a heady journey.

This year, nine unique Intel experts will be presenting eight fascinating GDC sessions. From discussions about Intel graphics to ray tracing to realistic rendering on multi-core processor-based systems, these guys have tons of technical and strategic information to share. Read about their sessions and get to know a little bit about each of them. We're confident you'll be as pleasantly surprised as we were.

Read how RadTIME, Inc. used Intel® IPP to combine 2D and 3D elements in one tool, eliminating many time-consuming rendering steps, reducing production costs and TTM, and possibly even causing a small revolution in the video industry.