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Intel Xe GPU will support hardware ray tracing


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https://wccftech.com/intel-xe-gpu-supports-ray-tracing/

 

Intel-XE-Discrete-GPU-With-Next-Gen-Graphics_3-1030x644.thumb.jpg.7bb3078833559f79c1f6c698780401a5.jpg

 

Intel has just announced something pretty big at FMX in Germany: that their Xe GPU architecture will support hardware acceleration of Ray tracing. This is a pretty big deal because it puts this architecture on par with Turing as far as DXR goes and makes it far superior to solutions that rely on software or GPGPU acceleration (like the Pascal series). Ray tracing is a bleeding edge technology right now and pretty much in its infancy for the consumer market but has pretty huge implications in the data center segment as of now.

Intel Xe supports ray tracing
Ray tracing has deep reaching implications in the data center market. Ray tracing for big budget movies like Pixar films is done traditionally on CPUs because they are 100% accurate. Unfortunately however, they are also orders of magnitude slower. If a GPU solution exists that can offer a high level of accuracy (preferably 100%) at a GPU levels of speed then this would quickly revolutionize he brief of the announcement made at FMX is given below:

At FMX, Intel Graphics-related news will be disclosed that Intel:

Xe architecture roadmap for data center optimized rendering includes ray tracing hardware acceleration support for the Intel® Rendering Framework family of API’s and libraries.
Establishing the Intel® Graphics and Visualization Institutes of XeLLENCE (Intel® GVI) and has selected three founding institutions (University of Utah, University of Texas, Austin and University of Stuttgart) to participate based on their significant open research and open source contributions related to Intel Rendering Framework, large scale graphics and visualization.
Building on the Intel Rendering Framework with the introduction of the Intel® Open Volume Kernel Library (set for release in Q3 2019) to enhance support for volume rendering – a critical capability for scientific visualization and high-end digital content creation.

 

Intel also talked about the rendering performance of its processors at FMX but that is something that is just an iterative improvement and not something as revolutionary as an Xe datacenter GPU with hardware acceleration for Ray tracing. Now considering the company was talking about PIXAR and the likes I am going to assume the ray tracing implementation features a very high and close to 100% rate of accuracy. I cannot imagine that it is 100% because if that were the case the CPU rendering industry would be completely and irrevocably disrupted as soon as the first Xe GPU lands.

A close to 100% ray tracing accuracy would allow budget film makers and significantly lower the threshold for high quality animations in the film industry. In fact, the average laymen would probably find it impossible to tell the difference between a CPU and a GPU ray traced image. Needless to say this is very exciting stuff and we can definitely expect this technology to be part of a consumer lineup of GPUs as well – whenever they land.

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