IT TURNS OUT that one small interview over at Custard PC proved as a key evidence in a story that is now circulating the Internet at the speed of bits and bytes.

In that interview, Richard "The Don" Huddy outlined some industry trends, and where this whole shebang with in-game physics is going. Once Intel bought Havok for 100-odd million US Dollars, you might expect the second player in the physics game to become a target for takeover as well.

However, Huddy says his words were taken out of context (as it usually happens with hacks), and the whole story about Arabian Micro Devices buying Ageia became fantasy.

Richard gave us the following statement:

I think my words have been taken to mean more than they really do.

I said that I wouldn’t rule it out and I said we’re not likely to splash $100M on a PPU vendor, and I said that we go through the arguments every few months.

That’s certainly not something that I would have headlined as “AMD considers buying Ageia”. The thought has certainly passed through our minds - but then humans think about a lot of things, and if you look at what I said I also point out that the cost is crazy high, so actually I come very close to ruling it out…

As far as I can see there’s really no news here. Everyone in the industry understands that Ageia’s primary aim is to just to be bought, and we’re one of the companies that needs to work out whether we think it makes sense.

So there you have it, AMD is not buying Ageia. Daamit. µ