I wonder if this could be used in the near future as an raytracing add-in card to offload the RT functions from the GPU. Like we had it in the past with the PhysX accelerators. It would be a short lived technology, but might really benefit the current generation of new GPU models.

@Hilbert Hagedoorn "AMD RTX" => "AMD RTG" = = = = Graph in article is interesting, especially since it mentions all new and shiny HPC while this product is marked as HP. - - - -

pato:

I wonder if this could be used in the near future as an raytracing add-in card to offload the RT functions from the GPU. Like we had it in the past with the PhysX accelerators. It would be a short lived technology, but might really benefit the current generation of new GPU models.

One day, far into future, we'll have cards with very small rasterization capabilities which will do wonders for raytracing. nVidia could have and maybe should have made dedicated raytracing accelerator card that would deliver like 10x performance in comparison to current cards at same price level. Raytracing in nature has one advantage, and that's multi-GPU scalability. (Same way as it is perfectly scalable across many CPU cores across computer network.) That would be business, right? Person keeps 2080Ti for half of decade or longer, but will buy pure rt accelerator to accompany it where applicable.

pato:

I wonder if this could be used in the near future as an raytracing add-in card to offload the RT functions from the GPU. Like we had it in the past with the PhysX accelerators. It would be a short lived technology, but might really benefit the current generation of new GPU models.

no, it can't and never will, stop wondering.

Astyanax:

no, it can't and never will, stop wondering.

I agree with the "never will" part, I strongly disagree with the "can't" part. It very much can, but whether or not it is worthwhile is a different story.