Interview with Richard Huddy, AMD Developer Relations Manager

[onethreehill]

bit-tech: How exactly does AMD work with game developers? Nvidia is very vocal about its machine [The Way It's Meant to Be Played program], but we've heard less on the AMD front - why is this?

RH: Well the reason why you hear less on the AMD front is not because we do less, but we don't market our developer relations in the same way that Nvidia do. I remember an issue I raised at Nvidia in 2002 [when he worked there] and the HR manager came back to me and said, "you really don't want to raise that point - it won't do your career any good, Dan Vivoli, the VP of marketing is someone Jen-Hsun Huang is leaning on more and more these days, so if he doesn't like it, you won't make any progress on the matter." [Nvidia]'s a marketing lead company and that's not how it is with AMD. Look at our CEO at the moment: we've got Dirk Meyer, an engineer by trade who’s deeply a technologist.

I mean, I've still got a respect for Jen-Hsun because he knows his tech too, but Nvidia is clearly a marketing lead company. [Nvidia] has put this big program together with equally big label that they shove in your face all the time, but I don't really think what they do is radically different than what we do - we just don't make as much noise about it.

How do we work with people? Well looking at the process we did with DirectX 11, we seed samples and early drivers [to developers]. We have excellent relationships with a number of key games developers which means we give them pre-release drivers, sometimes several times a day if it's on a key issue, but that's rare. Along with seeding the hardware we'll put engineers on site - so if you look at Dirt 2, STALKER: Call of Pripyat and Unigen have their engine out there at the moment, these are the only DirectX 11 titles right now -
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2010/01/06/interview-amd-on-game-development-and-dx11/1

[madcho]

Very nice interview.

I love AMD's point of view.

[ajaidev]

Whos Hubby...

Nice interview :) tough

[SKYMTL]

Very interesting interview.

It's ironic the AMD is now doing the same thing by shoving people's faces into their "The Future is Fusion" before several games. It is also interesting how he states that NVIDIA's approach is mostly marketing-driven even though NVIDIA's developer relations have led to implementation of things like features on games that wouldn't normally have them and a very good record of SLI profiles working.

On the other hand, ATI seems to have struggled with developer relations, marketing aside. There were widespread problems with games like Empire: Total War, Saboteur and others I could probably name if it wasn't so early in the morning. Not to mention that even recently there have been issues with CF profiles in several new games. Hopefully, with their lead in DX11 they will have a good foot in the door with developers and move forward.

[Lightman]

[Nvidia] put PhsyX in there, and that's the one I've got a reasonable amount of respect for. Even though I don't think PhysX - a proprietary standard - is the right way to go, despite Nvidia touting it as an "open standard" and how it would be "more than happy to license it to AMD", but [Nvidia] won't. It's just not true! You know the way it is, it's simply something [Nvidia] would not do and they can publically say that as often as it likes and know that it won't, because we've actually had quiet conversations with them and they've made it abundantly clear that we can go whistle.

:rolleyes:

[ajaidev]

In middle of this such a thing happens

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2038999

[Nedjo]

Whos Hubby...

Nice interview :) tough

Richard is one excellent bloke! He's brilliant engineer, very technical, and is one of the few people capable to explain complicated technical stuff in plain English (being English him self does help :) )
He also has famous English sense of humor. Really pleasant lad to talk to.

[Teemax]

:rolleyes:

Double :rolleyes:

Interesting stuff.

[Aerwidh]

Nice, thanks for sharing!

[eric66]

well seems there is one more high end gpu coming from Ati this year :P

[Teemax]

well seems there is one more high end gpu coming from Ati this year :P

Yup, I hope it's HD 6870?? :rofl:

[ajaidev]

"bit-tech: IF - given we don't know yet - when Nvidia's Fermi cards finally arrive they are faster than your HD 5970-

RH: -Well if it's not faster and it's 50 per cent bigger, then they've done something wrong-"

lol poor RH must be confused "Too many question ahhh :) "


Richard is one excellent bloke! He's brilliant engineer, very technical, and is one of the few people capable to explain complicated technical stuff in plain English (being English him self does help :) )
He also has famous English sense of humor. Really pleasant lad to talk to.



Thanks did not know that, AMD certainly lacks a popular face Nvidia has a very powerful face and so does Intel "Actually the face changes time to time sometimes its a Indian and some times its a Scottish gentleman"

[eric66]

Yup, I hope it's HD 6870?? :rofl:
may be :D he is pretty sure that they will have fastest gpu for majority of 2010 so i expect 6000 series come out in july or something

[initialised]

Good read, deeply cynical but tactful slating of nVidia and Intel without being nasty about it.

[Wesker]

In middle of this such a thing happens

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2038999

Erm, did you read the link?

[Boissez]

Interesting read indeed, especially the last part.

[SKYMTL]

may be :D he is pretty sure that they will have fastest gpu for majority of 2010 so i expect 6000 series come out in july or something


Actually, he said the following:


...but I expect that for the majority of 2010 we'll have the fastest card you can buy.

So, according to his thinking NVIDIA may have something better....but you won't be able to actually get your hands on it. ;)

Remember, whether it be NVIDIA's guys or ATI's, it all comes down to very carefully marketing speak.

[Hornet331]

Erm, did you read the link?

Obviously not. :ROTF:

[zalbard]

Looks like ATI helps more and more developers with the new titles recently. I was quite surprised, and it is good news since we see new DX11 features in games mostly thanks to these guys. And I totally support the rapid adoption of the new tech. :up:
Just a pity about ATI's physics, it does not seem too bright, there will 'probably be something in 2010', which is not so optimistic... :(

[ajaidev]

Erm, did you read the link?

I did it was suppose to be funny...

err "Intel obama hate" whts not funny about that !! meh


I am suprised AMD i working with 3 phy options boy o boy, well at least bullet is coming fast but i hope the direct compute path is better.

[Mad1723]

It's a bit refreshing over Nvidia PR sounding like the same can of prepared marketing BS. I must say that ATI should put even more emphasis on their drivers and relations with developers, to make it a bit more easier for certain gamers. Drivers have always been the weak point of ATI, so it's time for them to put some workforce behind and make those drivers come out more often and with more features!

But I must say it's one of the first interviews in a long time I didn't lose the will to read it after 2 questions. It's properly and genuinely interesting.

[god_43]

lol wth, that link is about president Obama; describing the failures of the US intel system?

[SKYMTL]

Just a pity about ATI's physics, it does not seem too bright, there will 'probably be something in 2010', which is not so optimistic... :(

Actually, ATI isn't to blame for it at all. It will take time for the OpenCL physics libraries to be completed considering most of them are being developed by teams without much manpower (Bullet, Pixelux, etc.). So, ATI is pretty much waiting on them.

[zalbard]

Actually, ATI isn't to blame for it at all. It will take time for the OpenCL physics libraries to be completed considering most of them are being developed by teams without much manpower (Bullet, Pixelux, etc.). So, ATI is pretty much waiting on them.
And Intel, yeah. He made it pretty clear in the interview.

So when it comes to getting it on the GPU - we are very serious about it and as long as Havok are allowed to work with us, we'll work with them. If for some reason they decide that Larrabee is going to be a success and not can it so we're going to shut you out, then there's clearly nothing we can do about that.

[ajaidev]

Actually, ATI isn't to blame for it at all. It will take time for the OpenCL physics libraries to be completed considering most of them are being developed by teams without much manpower (Bullet, Pixelux, etc.). So, ATI is pretty much waiting on them.

I am quite sure Havok has quite a bit of people for development...

[Monkeywoman]

good read!
Morally I think that would be reprehensible, but from a business point of view I could argue in favour of it, but we think it's really the wrong thing to do and we've not locked a single line of DirectX 11 code. That's the difference in the way [AMD] works - we work through enablement and open standards. [Nvidia] works through closed standards and disablement, which, to me is inexcusable; it's as bad as that.

[SKYMTL]

I am quite sure Havok has quite a bit of people for development...

The only thing that will be accelerated in Havok through OpenCL is their Havok Cloth. Everything else will remain CPU-accelerated for the time being.

Trust me, it won't be Havok that spearheads the primary development into OpenCL. It will be the smaller companies. Havok seems to have been held back from making any forward progress with OpenCL simply because Intel hoped they could use the API for Larrabee. Now with those plans on hold, maybe we will see Havok pick things up a bit and maybe put HavokFX back on the plate.

[Manicdan]

isnt AMD moving away from Havok and trying to get bullet physics out asap?

[SKYMTL]

isnt AMD moving away from Havok and trying to get bullet physics out asap?

Last I talked to the developer, AMD had very little to do with Bullet other than providing some driver and hardware support. From what I remember, all of their development is done on NVIDIA hardware.