New AI Chip Would Make Games SmarterLONDON – Imagine sneaking up on an elite soldier when suddenly alarm bells sound. The soldier, spotting you in your role as a superspy, immediately yells, dodges once or twice, then runs facefirst into a wall.Sound familiar? It probably does, because that's the scenario Israeli startup AIseek hopes to eliminate forever from the multibillion-dollar world of video games.ADVERTISEMENTWhen completed, AIseek's AIS-1 chip would improve one of the key weak points of computer games, executives said. While the multi-billion graphics industry led by ATI and Nvidia spun off from the need for dedicated graphics accelerators, gamers have complained for years that the artificial intelligence, the coding that defines the artificial behaviors of the "opponents" that a gamer competes against, has demanded its own improvements.AIseek has developed a hardware prototype of its technology that it already has in house, Assaf Mendelson, founder and lead programmer of the company, told ExtremeTech on Thursday. Although the company has not begun discussing its technology in detail, Mendelson said that up to two versions of the chip are planned: one, like the Ageia PhysX chip that was introduced last year, would be mounted on an add-on card for PCs, or possibly mounted inside a video-game console. A second lower-power version may also be developed; in a novel twist, the company could market it inside a USB key, Mendelson said.Artificial intelligence within games varies dramatically, and refining the models has been the subject of research papers as well as presentations at forums like the Europe Game Developers Conference here.Eve developers themselves have bemoaned the state of AI. "Ninety percent of video game AI really is pretty damn bad," Matthew Perry, who founded game developer Shiny Entertainment, told an MIT audience. "I think that's actually why it's so much fun to shoot things. Because the AI is so bad and the characters are so annoying."Solving the Nature of AIAlthough Perry's comments were made in 2000, programmers at the GDC said they looked forward to adding additional AI code into games, even as they wrestled with how to deal with future multicore processors, which will emphasize maximizing instructions-per-clock, necessitating that the threads running on the multiple processors are in sync."Dude, except for Far Cry, the AI pretty much sucks," one programmer said in the halls outside the conference rooms here, kicking off an informal heated discussion among his cohorts.ADVERTISEMENTArtificial intelligence varies dramatically, but it is based primarily on branches, the logic trees that represent decisions. Although Intel and rival AMD hope to persuade game designers to improve their games by adding new software functions, PC microprocessors and even some of the newer multicore processors for video-game consoles are still too linear to process the myriad number of decisions that go into artificial intelligence, Mendelson argued. In response, the company started its own ground-up design."Our CTO decided that we needed to develop something as weird as possible," Mendelson said.The prototype the company has in house is functional, but the company will spin a revised version that runs faster and with an improved interface before the company launches. That launch date has not been scheduled, but AIseek will make a more formal disclosure in 2006, Mendelson said.The other problem that AIseek must solve is the diverse nature of AI. Because the games that AI is used in are so different, the same AI algorithm would have a hard time powering a computerized opponent in chess or go, playing poker, crafting virtual worlds in Civilization, and attacking terrorists in Counter-Strike. Most of the recent work done has been to emulate human responses in first-person shooters, creating improved "bots" that can be used to fight alongside or against human players.The AIS-1 chip will focus on four key areas: path finding, or computing the most tactically sound way to move from point to point; terrain analysis; moving AI bots in formation and squads; and sensory simulation, which may mean the ability to react to stimuli in the artificial environment.AISeek's ArchitectureAISeek's AI ArchitectureSoftware applications will access the chip through a weighted graph algorithm as well as a pathfinding API, which will then access the AIS-1 via a device driver and a set of hardware application layers, according to a diagram of the company's technology. The result is a "1000 times acceleration over current algorithms," according to the chip's project description.However, the additional physical and virtual processors entering the market may provide an alternative method to improve AI. Intel showed off six games that incorporated support for its dual-core technology, including THQ's racing game, Juiced, released last year. None of the games used the second processor to improve AI, however; in Juiced, players who have a dual-core processor can race under trees whose branches drop leaves, creating a whirlwind of leaves as the cars whiz by. Because some of the racers in a networked game may have the dual-core technology, THQ included visual effects that provided a nice bonus for the high-end player "but didn't break the experience," said Leigh Davies, an Intel applications engineer.That is exactly what AIseek hopes to do. "Whenever you have these improved visual effects or physics, there's no corresponding improvement or effect on the AI," Mendelson said.If the AIS-1 makes it to market, the chip could provide yet another method for Intel and PC OEMs to differentiate entertainment PCs from their more practical business-oriented brethren. It's possible, Mendelson speculated, that the AIS-1 and the PhysX physics chip could be added onto an add-on card "to create a true gaming PC," he said.At this point, however, the compan yhas not addressed the issue of whether it will offer a software-only version of its technology, as Ageia has done, in an attempt to grow the market.The company, founded in 2004, is a product of the Am-Shav Technological Incubator, an Israeli government-funded venture to promote technology startups. AIseek, like others in the incubator, will receive a funding for a total of two years from the Office of Chief Scientist at the Israeli Ministry of Trade and Industry.
