Intel to Demonstrate Arc Ray-Tracing and XeSS Technology at GDC 2022

Intel will utilize this year's Games Developers Conference (GDC) to reveal details about its new Arc Alchemist graphics card line. Intel will present a number of talks at GDC pertaining to ray tracing and Xe SuperSampling (XeSS) solutions. 

The "A Quick Guide to Intel's Ray-Tracing Hardware" presentation claims to guide participants through Intel's implementation, as well as the "how" and "why" of the company's approach.

While the event description doesn't give many facts, it's not lacking in fascinating nuggets and, predictably, raises more questions than it answers. The session, which is a GDC presentation, will provide an overhead technical view of Intel's approach and explain why the implementation "has been built with a path-tracing future in mind."

Path tracing is still referred to as ray tracing. It is similar to ray tracing, however it was postulated years later in 1986 by James Kajiya in his work The Rendering Equation. It was suggested as a remedy to ray tracing's shortcomings as a rendering approach (which was first theorized nearly two decades earlier, in 1968). Intel's mention of route tracing paves the way for future advancements in physics-accurate graphics.