We don't know what the system architect's actual words were; only the Wired reporter mentioning it supports ray-tracing. For all we know, the dialogue went:Don't, at the very least there will be special instructions to accelerate/accommodate ray tracing. The fact that the system architect was keen on mentioning the feature
Wired: Can you do raytracing on it?
Mark: Yes, you can trace rays using compute on the GPU.
Wired: What does that enable? Better graphics?
Mark: Ray tracing is an oft used method in games for physics, AI and audio. For example, if you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players’ footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that. It's all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment.
You don't need fast ray tracing tracing for 3D audio. We've had 3D audio on PC for generations. You need a good HRTF mix-down and positioned audio....in the context of a custom navi GPU and a custom ray traced audio unit gives a strong indication of some sort of hardware solution.
Don't go there.I think this thread has had enough of console RT doubters at this point.