nVidia shader patent (REYES/Raytracing/GI) destined for PS3?

[Spidermate]

Jaws, it goes A LOT deeper than that now.

Good god, Jaws heart just missed a beat reading that, be careful with such posts.

Fredi

That could mean anything.

 

[zidane1strife]

You just keep praying don't you.

Good lord Sony, give us a 4PE PS3. Make realtime raytracing a good alternative to shader tricks and please lord, give us a whole gig of RAM. Amen.

Fredi

I second let us pray lad, let us pray

Plausibility? It's a couple of years old now..it may no longer be relevant, I guess.

Ain't it fall2k3 that's just a little more than a year ago.

 

[Farid]

Here's something from Gabor Nagy's Curiculum Vitae:

real-time photorealistic rendering (including global illumination with spherical harmonics).

 

[Titanio]

Ain't it fall2k3 that's just a little more than a year ago.

True enough. I guess it could fit in nicely with when they probably started talking more seriously with NVidia. Still, though..

 

[j^aws]

I found that patent a couple of weeks ago (Panajev knows that.. ) and I refused to link it here cause I didn't want to start another PS3/ray tracing discussion. LOL

LOL!

I also remember reading it myself a couple a weeks ago too and I thought you/someone had posted it with the regular weekly patent updates!

It wasn't until I saw this thread,

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewt...p;postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

...in the 3D forum that reminded me to post it when I realised it wasn't posted anywhere!

 

[j^aws]

This was posted from Nirey, a respected and trusted poster from PSINEXT,

Hey sorry guys, i have not posted in so long since last time. But anyways i am sorry i couldn't say anything about this sweet deal until it was announced since i was under very tight NDA's. Anyways, now it's official, and i would like to say that this is a co-joint collaboration between sony in-house graphics technology and Nvidia technology. What this means is that this "custom-gpu" is a totally different architecture that is not based on an existing architecture from Nvidia.

More will come soon.

http://psinext.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=84712#84712

Hmmm...curioser and curioser...REYES?...Raytracing?...GI?

Jaws, it goes A LOT deeper than that now. Some of it would probably blow your mind. But I'll keep my lips sealed .

Hehe!

 

[j^aws]

Here's something from Gabor Nagy's Curiculum Vitae:

real-time photorealistic rendering (including global illumination with spherical harmonics).

The other inventor, Robin Green has released a paper on spherical harmonics,

http://www.research.scea.com/gdc2003/spherical-harmonic-lighting.html

He's also got a few more papers at SCEA R&D,

http://www.research.scea.com/research/research.html

 

[Shifty Geezer]

real-time photorealistic rendering (including global illumination with spherical harmonics).

The other inventor, Robin Green has released a paper on spherical harmonics,

http://www.research.scea.com/gdc2003/spherical-harmonic-lighting.html[/quote]Just downloading now. Reading the intro though, I've got ask has anyone put any of this into practise and if not, why not?

 

[Titanio]

The other inventor, Robin Green has released a paper on spherical harmonics,

http://www.research.scea.com/gdc2003/spherical-harmonic-lighting.html

Just downloading now. Reading the intro though, I've got ask has anyone put any of this into practise and if not, why not?

Spherical Harmonics? I think it's being used in the UE3 engine. I believe there was also a PSP demo featuring it.

 

[Simon F]

Spherical Harmonics? I think it's being used in the UE3 engine. I believe there was also a PSP demo featuring it.

Judging from the developer forums, it might be easier to count those who aren't using it. :?

 

[one]

I found that patent a couple of weeks ago (Panajev knows that.. ) and I refused to link it here cause I didn't want to start another PS3/ray tracing discussion. LOL

LOL!

I also remember reading it myself a couple a weeks ago too and I thought you/someone had posted it with the regular weekly patent updates!

It wasn't until I saw this thread,

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewt...p;postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

...in the 3D forum that reminded me to post it when I realised it wasn't posted anywhere!

A discussion (or Diskussion) between David Kirk of nVIDIA and Slusallek (the SaarCOR guy). Throughout the discussion, Kirk is against raytracing-specific hardware.

 

[Phil]

Interesting debate, thanks for linking.

I find this comment most interesting:

However, you are ignoring my point, that for the first time there is now a simple but fully functional prototype hardware for ray tracing that is already faster than both GPUs and CPUs for ray tracing. Even better, its performance can be scaled up simply by adding more copies onto the same chip because it is not limited by the usual memory bandwidth problems.

Any ideas what kind of hardware prototype he's refering to?

 

[Farid]

Any ideas what kind of hardware prototype he's refering to?

That would be the Saarcor project.

 

[Farid]

I've got ask has anyone put any of this into practise and if not, why not?

Since we're in the Console forum, we can talk about, the soon to be released, Conker: Live and Reloaded, which use PRT among others cool rendering tech.

 

[Fox5]

I've got ask has anyone put any of this into practise and if not, why not?

Since we're in the Console forum, we can talk about, the soon to be released, Conker: Live and Reloaded, which use PRT among others cool rendering tech.

How does it use it?

BTW, conker doesn't seem to push xbox the same way other games do. Games with bump mapping and flashy effects, like halo 2, jet set radio future, and crimsom skies cause my xbox graphics to really glitch up(especially for halo 2) after an hour or two of playing, but games like ninja gaiden(and the conker xbox demo) don't cause any problems.

 

[j^aws]

...
A discussion (or Diskussion) between David Kirk of nVIDIA and Slusallek (the SaarCOR guy). Throughout the discussion, Kirk is against raytracing-specific hardware.

Yeah, Kirk seems against the idea of adding further hardwired/ fixed functionality to the GPU. Also looking at the date of the interview (nearly a year ago), Slusallek wouldn't have had access to SM3.0 level GPUs aka NV40 as Kirk would've, and their potential for raytracing using pixel shaders as mentioned in my earlier posts.

Kirk is stressing the point of flexibility provided by high level shader languages that can be applied to both rasterizing and raytracing hardware. Judging by a more recent interview below, he sees the future moving away from fixed functionality but he's not against raytracing just fixed function RT units it seems,

Ray-Casting

Reader Question: Will we see non-uniform rasterization, streaming ray-casts, or equivalent features to enable the kind of graphics we really want—real-time, dynamic lighting with a large number of lights?—Jason_Watkins

David Kirk: Yes.

Over time, everything that has been hardwired and fixed-function will become general-purpose. This will enable much more variety in graphics algorithms and ultimately, much more realism.

The good news, for my job security, is that graphics is still ultimately very very hard. Tracing streaming rays in all directions, reflecting between all of the objects, lights, and fog molecules in parallel is extremely hard. Nature does it . . . in real time! However, nature does it by using all of the atoms in the universe to complete the computation. That is not available to us in a modern GPU .

Graphics will continue to be a collection of clever tricks, to do just enough work to calculate visibility, lighting, shadows, and even motion and physics, without resorting to brutishly calculating every detail. So, I think that there's a great future both in more powerful and flexible GPUs as well as ever more clever graphics algorithms and approaches. Continued...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1744811,00.asp

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Which, as I understood it, was the goal of Cell. Provide enough flexible FP performance that you can apply it to whatever you want. In one game, have raytraced graphics, and another, a 2D simple interface to real-time 3D audio synthesis.

 

[j^aws]

***BUMP***

A recent SCE patent,

Method and apparatus for real-time global illumination incorporating stream processor based hybrid ray tracing

...
39. A computing device, comprising: a graphics processing unit (GPU) capable of determining lighting characteristics for an object in real time, the lighting characteristics defined through a basis function, the GPU including a stream processor configured to split a stream of data associated with the lighting characteristics into multiple simultaneous operations.

40. The computing device of claim 39, wherein the computing device is a video game console.

41. The computing device of claim 39, further comprising: a display screen in communication with the GPU, the display screen configured to present image data representing the object.

42. The computing device of claim 39, wherein the stream processor is a programmable hardware unit capable of executing code that is replicated multiple times.

43. The computing device of claim 42, wherein the code that is replicated multiple times is configured to process one of a ray tracing algorithm and multiply and add operations for data derived from the ray tracing algorithm.

44. The computing device of claim 43, wherein the ray tracing algorithm determines a direct illumination lighting characteristic in real time and the multiply an add operation determine a secondary lighting characteristic in real time.

45. The computing device of claim 39, wherein the GPU is further configured to render the object through a process involving linear interpolation, such that the lighting characteristics are applied to the rendered object.

46. The computing device of claim 39, wherein the basis function is one of a wavelet and a spherical basis function.
...

Stream processor = CELL?
GPU = NV5x?
Video game console = PS3?

-----------
Reference,

Below is SCEA presentation at SIGGRAPH circa 2001 on the future of next gen games,

http://www.research.scea.com/research/pdfs/la-siggraph-panel_2001_DOM.pdf

and

Ray Tracing on a Stream Processor, Stanford University, March 2004

Paper funded by nVidia investigating raytracing on stream processors using pixel shaders and Cg.

Oh I forgot to add this patent also by Robin Green talking about a video game console too, cross-referenced with the above patent,

Method and apparatus for self shadowing and self interreflection light capture

Method and apparatus for self shadowing and self interreflection light capture
Abstract

A method for rendering an image with high resolution lighting characteristics is provided. The method initiates with generating a texture map associated with the image. The texture map is defined by texels. Then, a value representing a lighting characteristic for each of the texels is calculated. Next, the value is stored. Then, a coordinate space of the texture map is associated with a display screen coordinate space. Next, the image is rendered on a display screen using the stored value. A method for incorporating the lighting characteristics of an image into a texture map is also provided. A computing device and integrated circuit both configured to present real time shadowing effects are also provided.
....

 

[Mythos]

Thanx for the read.

Interesting stuff.

 

[j^aws]

PS3? Custom logic part of NV5x?

Distributed rendering? Harddisk?