A light has been casted - AMD files patent combining hardware and software for raytracing
Alright, they actually did file that patent a while ago already. It entails a technique to perform real-time ray tracing calculations more efficiently. The methodology is a somewhat hybrid solution that combines hardware and software to calculate faster, without the need for RT cores. Likely the technology was intended with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett in mind.
AMD has announced in a published patent how its proprietary software and hardware solutions are supposed to make raytracing better. It seems like this processor feature could also be included in the Xbox Scarlett and PS5 based on texture processor based ray tracing. As you know, both upcoming consoles will come up with raytracing support. According to the patent, AMD is pursuing a hybrid approach to accelerate ray tracing. Here is an excerpt:
"The hybrid approach (fixed functional acceleration for a single node of the BVH tree) and the use of a shader unit to schedule processing solves the problems with [note: current raytracing solutions] for hardware-based and / or software-only solutions only, while maintaining flexibility because the shader unit can continue to control the overall computation, bypassing the fixed functional hardware as needed while still taking advantage of the performance advantage of the fixed functional hardware, and using the texture processor infrastructure eliminates large buffers for Ray storage and BVH caching, which are typically in a hardware raytracing solution because the existing VGPRs and the texture cache can be used in their place,which saves a lot of space and complexity of the hardware solution. "
This raytracing calculation function of the AMD processor accelerates raytracing calculations.
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Senior Member
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This looks really cool if i've understood it correctly.
You have fixed function hardware for just part of the full ray trace, the single node. You can have as many of these as you want, and they will each do one full node in HW.
But, the shaders will control the full ray trace, using the fixed function hardware if and when needed, and bypassing it when not.
So technically you keep both fed optimally, and there should be less idle transistors.
one per CU maybe ?
Aren't the CU's smaller on Navi, compared to Vega/VII ?
Senior Member
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funny with rt,x nv says look what we can do big shows and stuff amd yeah we got it hardware and software
with half a paragraph no show now or anything
maybe they have to keep quite because the unreleased consoles
Senior Member
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that is a paragraph from the patent file.
You do not show anything there, you register the method you use to do it, in case someone wants to copy it.
It does not have to be a detailed description, as long as you have a working prototype that matches the description.
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Would be funny if AMD masters ray tracing and Nvidia is left behind and cant do anything about it because the best method is patented.
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Meanwhile the preview of the Windows SDK shows updated DirectX Raytracing APIs...