Games have been evolving pretty rapidly and what was called “advanced” four years ago now cannot amaze today. Visual part, e.g., graphics, is improving very tangibly these days, whereas physics and artificial intelligence (AI) are hardly changing. Ambitions startup called Ageia wants to help physics effects to become more advanced, but artificial intelligence is something that requires an improvement too. Recently a company called AIseek said it had developed a processor that will accelerate artificial intelligence operations.

Game AI is best thought off as a hierarchy or pyramid. The top layers of the pyramid encompass “high-level” AI (such as game-level or character-level decisions). The bottom layers represent “low-level” AI (including tasks such as pathfinding, line-of-sight, and terrain analysis). These low-level tasks are characterized by three features: they are based on common, well-known algorithms; they are CPU-intensive; and they constitute the necessary “building blocks” that underlie high-level AI. These three features make low-level AI well-suited for off-loading to dedicated hardware.

When creating a title, game developers have to pre-arrange certain behavior patterns or use other methods to simplify artificial intelligence so that to avoid heavy calculations on central processing units, which may cause significant performance drops. AIseek’s Intia processor accelerates some AI functionality, e.g., low-level AI tasks. The routines accelerated include movement (in particular, pathfinding and group movement); sensory simulation (in particular, line-of-sight) and terrain analysis, according to the company.

AIseek said that, computationally speaking, AI problems are typically search-intensive, translating into large graphs with a high degree of branching. The Intia processor tackles these specific processing challenges with a specially designed graph processing core (GPC). “The GPC lies at the heart of the Intia processor, delivering fast and optimal solutions to graph-based computations,” the company said.

The Israel-based company indicated that it is currently looking for game developers to employ advanced AI into their games by using software development kit (SDK) from AIseek. The company did not unveil any games in production that will employ the advanced AI Intia processor can provide.

While AIseek Intia processor may have eventual success, the startup needs to succeed in persuading game developers to employ advanced AI into their titles and quickly sell a large amount of Intia chips to end-users. The problem is that game developers are reluctant to implement new features for hardware gamers do not have, while end-users are reluctant to acquire hardware that brings no evident and immediate benefits. Similar issues currently hit Ageia and its PhysX hardware.