Epic Games announce that Intel Threading Building Blocks (Intel TBB) 2.2 has been incorporated into Unreal Engine 3. The newly released version of the popular parallel programming abstraction has been integrated with the 64-bit Unreal Editor, and as part of this collaboration, Intel has joined Epic’s premier Integrated Partners Program (IPP).Intel TBB 2.2 is now available to publishers and developers licensing Unreal Engine 3, making it easier than ever for studios to leverage Intel’s scalable memory allocator for multithreaded computing. As with all new engine features and enhancements, Epic’s distribution of Intel TBB is available to Unreal Engine 3 licensees at no extra cost.
Intel TBB is an award-winning runtime library that simplifies the writing of multithreaded applications. Just as the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) extends the core language, Intel TBB offers C++ users a higher level abstraction for parallelism. To implement Intel TBB, developers use familiar C++ templates and coding style, leaving low-level threading details to the library. It is also portable between architectures and operating systems. With Intel TBB, developers get the benefits of faster programming, scalable performance, and easier to maintain code.
“Bringing Intel into the Integrated Partners Program and integrating Intel TBB into Unreal Engine 3 ensures our licensees are within reach of the best development tools available,” said Dr. Michael Capps, president of Epic Games. “This partnership will help minimize the work required to author multithreaded applications for Unreal-powered games and, in the long term, provide developers with greater access to Intel Tools.”
“Intel is committed to providing the very best tools for parallel programming like Intel TBB and our new Parallel Studio suite,” said James Reinders, marketing director and chief evangelist, Developer Products Division, Intel Corporation. “By integrating Intel TBB in the Unreal Engine and sharing it with their licensees at no additional cost, Epic is facilitating parallelism to spur greater multi-core innovation among game developers.”