Friday, May 3rd 2024
AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4
AMD's next generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture is expected to feature a completely new ray tracing engine, Kepler L2, a reliable source with GPU leaks, claims. Currently, AMD uses a component called Ray Accelerator, which performs the most compute-intensive portion of the ray intersection and testing pipeline, while AMD's approach to ray tracing on a hardware level still relies greatly on the shader engines. The company had debuted the ray accelerator with RDNA 2, its first architecture to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate specs, and improved the component with RDNA 3, by optimizing certain aspects of its ray testing, to bring about a 50% improvement in ray intersection performance over RDNA 2.
The way Kepler L2 puts it, RDNA 4 will feature a fundamentally transformed ray tracing hardware solution from the ones on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. This could probably delegate more of the ray tracing workflow onto fixed-function hardware, unburdening the shader engines further. AMD is expected to debut RDNA 4 with its next line of discrete Radeon RX GPUs in the second half of 2024. Given the chatter about a power-packed event by AMD at Computex, with the company expected to unveil "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture on both server and client processors; we might expect some talk on RDNA 4, too.
Sources:
HotHardware, Kepler_L2 (Twitter)
The way Kepler L2 puts it, RDNA 4 will feature a fundamentally transformed ray tracing hardware solution from the ones on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. This could probably delegate more of the ray tracing workflow onto fixed-function hardware, unburdening the shader engines further. AMD is expected to debut RDNA 4 with its next line of discrete Radeon RX GPUs in the second half of 2024. Given the chatter about a power-packed event by AMD at Computex, with the company expected to unveil "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture on both server and client processors; we might expect some talk on RDNA 4, too.
227 Comments on AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4
"Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) is a popular ray tracing acceleration technique that uses a tree-based “acceleration structure” that contains multiple hierarchically-arranged bounding boxes (bounding volumes) that encompass or surround different amounts of scene geometry or primitives. Testing each ray against every primitive intersection in the scene is inefficient and computationally expensive, and BVH is one of many techniques and optimizations that can be used to accelerate it. The BVH can be organized in different types of tree structures and each ray only needs to be tested against the BVH using a depth-first tree traversal process instead of against every primitive in the scene. Prior to rendering a scene for the first time, a BVH structure must be created (called BVH building) from source geometry. The next frame will require either a new BVH build operation or a BVH refitting based on scene changes."
So AMD hopefully might be adding hardware to greatly facilitate BVH. You can search for patent US2023/0206543A1 by AMD for more details.
tbh even those that would never buy a Radeon product should root for more success from AMD in RT performance.
Bit of a sidestep, but I loved top gear a lot more then grand tour and I think a lot of that has to do with budget restraints they used to have, it asks for creativity which leads to great results.
With AMD, I dig that they are stuck with the consoles, I like that those are not fantastic which leads to innovation in optimization, how can we get some solid out of something that isnt quite that capable?
With an RTX4090 you basically just throw vast amounts of horsepower at it, not terrible but imo not as interesting or impressive.
It makes sense that they have to go with the times and the way the (gaming) world leads, but I love knowing the consoles will still be around for a long time forcing innovation through intelligent design.
This allowed for path tracing to be active during the game, explained was that that would be used to measure baked lighting against.
Anywho, there is no denoiser for it so its a grainy mess but obviously in the future, we could simply up the bounce count to a point where a denoiser would not be needed.
But like you said, that is future music.
Cool, wasn't aware it could run PT.I don't find DLSS/DLAA ugly.PT is certainly an interesting tech.Two generations too late for good upscaling or RT so only targeting mid range. Fingers crossed for RDNA 5 if it's called that.
I wonder if Battlemage will have a higher end card than RDNA 4. Intel's upscaler and RT tech is already ahead.
If RDNA3 was just RDNA2+double the RT, AMD would had much better success than what it managed with the current form of RDNA3.
Aiming for second place isn't aggressive or ambitious enough, especially now that there's three players in the scene.
Maybe a price war strategy would work if the products were roughly equivalent and thus competitive, but they're not.
Being forced to price your cards according to competition - 10%, rather than dictating prices based on performance and value of the featureset is weak and without initiative.