A rumour in the console prediction discussion has a theoretical 7TF Navi console with 800 GB/s bandwidth and an unspecified amount of raytracing hardware.
DXR incorporates raytracing into shaders, with the surfaces being computed on shader cores and accelerating RTX hardware being invoked only to perform ray intersect tests, so RT performance is bound to compute. With such a model, 7TFs compute seems ineffective and doesn't tally with the very high bandwidth.
In the case this console is Sony's PS5, it would not being bound to DXR and Sony are free to pursue any other avenues. Ergo, what are the options for RT solutions given such a bandwidth-heavy solution? Could you trace geometry in bespoke hardware and populate a geometry/surface buffer with surface IDs, perhaps, and then shade? The traditional raytracing algorithm is very simple, tracing surfaces as it goes, iteration by iteration, but given the success of deferred rendering, is there an opportunity for some form of deferred raytracing, or something else that handles geometry and shading differently, wherein a 7TF console would only be needing those shaders for surface shading?
DXR incorporates raytracing into shaders, with the surfaces being computed on shader cores and accelerating RTX hardware being invoked only to perform ray intersect tests, so RT performance is bound to compute. With such a model, 7TFs compute seems ineffective and doesn't tally with the very high bandwidth.
In the case this console is Sony's PS5, it would not being bound to DXR and Sony are free to pursue any other avenues. Ergo, what are the options for RT solutions given such a bandwidth-heavy solution? Could you trace geometry in bespoke hardware and populate a geometry/surface buffer with surface IDs, perhaps, and then shade? The traditional raytracing algorithm is very simple, tracing surfaces as it goes, iteration by iteration, but given the success of deferred rendering, is there an opportunity for some form of deferred raytracing, or something else that handles geometry and shading differently, wherein a 7TF console would only be needing those shaders for surface shading?