Graphics booster

A group of Israeli engineers has developed a device that can vastly accelerate the performance of PC graphics.

The so-called Hydra Engine, built by the engineers at Lucid Logix, is a patented system-on-a-chip designed to boost graphics performance in any multi-GPU environment.

Placed between a PC's chipset and GPUs, the Hydra Engine directs graphics processing traffic between the GPUs, using several intelligent parallelisation algorithms.

Its developers claim that the device is completely compatible with all gaming applications, chipsets and GPUs from any vendor, allowing users to develop a totally customised graphics system.

For their part, developers will no longer have to write games and applications specific to a chip, because whether the Application Programming Interface (API) is OpenGL or Direct3D, the Hydra Engine can tackle it.

Reference designs for the device are now available, enabling manufacturers to begin deploying parallel graphics power into PCs, laptops or motherboards.

The company, backed by venture providers Giza VC, Genesis Partners and Intel Capital, expects to start delivering the new devices in volume in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Consumer products based on the chip are expected to reach the market in the first half of 2009.