Ray tracing confirmed for next Gen PlayStation

[Grim5]

Well then its not true 4k is it?

It’s definitely softer, no doubt but this type of image reconstruction current consoles are already using and I see no reason they can’t keep using next gen

 

[Calin Banc]

Well then its not true 4k is it?

Exactly. With a 2080 (which I guess Navi could hit as a performance, but probably not the console version), in 1080p, 1st lvl of RT and all else maxed or enable, it drops for me under 60 in certain scenes. Add possibile RT reflection and shadows and maybe you're lucky with 30 judging by how things stand now.

But who knows, maybe they'll find some clever ways of improving performance with a new hardware and architecture.

 

[shankly1985]

Wasn't sure where to post this so I picked this thread has it might have a lot to do with the next gen consoles. This was posted on Reddit

I'm not a professional, non-native, but my TLDR:

• highly unsure: RT searches for the nearest triangle intersecting with a ray. it checks triangles iterative, wether it got hit by the ray and wether it is nearer than the current triangle in cache. if so, it's written to cache
  
  
• highly unsure: not every unnecessary area gets checked with every photon (called "Bounded Volume Hierachy" BVH. Grain of salt: triangles of a volume/body, that are behind naturally, getting discarded.)
  
  
• needs large caches (2/3 of RT area)
  
  
• high bandwith needed, while many accesses being random
  
  
• implemented in texture processor for low area/cost
  
  
• share existing bandwith and cache with texture processor (which is independed/asynchronously of shader
  
  
• each shader can turn off/bypass RT, if it drops performance otherwise
  
  
• mentioning of set-top box, mobile phones, TVs, tablets (hint for Samsung?)
  
  
• mentioning device using accelerometer, gyroscope and biometric scanner (why is this mentioned?! speculation: processing sensory information/input through RT cores?! or special features)
  
  
• lanes of a SIMD (single instruction multiple data) unit can be deactivated, if not used, saves bandwith and don't need random accesses to RAM (obviously saves power too)
  
  
• traversal control is controlled by shader and can be customized by programmer (I'm not sure what traversal really is)
  
  
• each feature/element can be used alone (supports my guess about processing sensory input via RT cores)
  
  
• this RT implementation can be used in ASICs and FPGAs too
  /Credit: FloundersEdition

More : https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/c6aij2/amds_raytracing_patent/

AMDs Ray-Tracing Patent
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20190197761.pdf

 

[Grim5]

Here is my understanding

AMD has repurposing the Texture units to do BVH calculations.

But this is not fixed function - when RT is not required those texture units do their normal job.

This method requires a large memory cache attached to the Texture units and also attached is what AMD calls the BVH calculation engine.

The benefit of this approach is you don’t have RT cores doing nothing when you aren’t playing a Ray Tracing game like Nvidia does. Also this method requires less die space compared to fixed function hardware

The negative is that AMDs method requires a large memory cache. And yet to be determined, it may not be as fast as fixed function hardware that Nvidia uses.

 

[Grim5]

The other recent news is Apisak- the guy who has leaked all the recent ryzen 3000 benchmarks has leaked a potential PS5 benchmark too.

The PS5 dev kit has been benchmarked on Firestrike scoring a flat 20,000 points.

For reference a vega 64 scores 19,400 points, a Radeon 7 scores 27,000 points.

 

[shankly1985]

The other recent news is Apisak- the guy who has leaked all the recent ryzen 3000 benchmarks has leaked a potential PS5 benchmark too.

The PS5 dev kit has been benchmarked on Firestrike scoring a flat 20,000 points.

For reference a vega 64 scores 19,400 points, a Radeon 7 scores 27,000 points.

That is an excellent upgrade over ps4 if true. Add in low level coding and next gen consoles will have some impressive visual and performance.

 

[TNA]

That is an excellent upgrade over ps4 if true. Add in low level coding and next gen consoles will have some impressive visual and performance.

Yep. Looking even more forward to buying a PS5 now

 

[vapor matt]

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.

taken from guru3d

 

[Grim5]

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.

taken from guru3d

The AMD patent was listed several days ago. They are modifying the texture units on Navi 2.0 to better optimize it for BVH calculations.
It's a hybrid approach and from what I can tell still requires a physical modification to the chip, so it's not like the 5700xt can just get a driver update - this is for 2020 Navi only.

This approach has the advantage that when not doing any ray tracing, the texture units can still do normal raster work, they don't sit there at idle doing nothing like Nvidia's RT cores