This article was reprinted with permission from Superpower.com.
Each time GameWorks is discussed, it seems that it will create a lot of saliva. Although it seems very confusing, the reason for the scrutiny is nothing more than because NVIDIA’s market position is overbearing (here is the hegemony of Chongqing dialect), so the specific operation will inevitably look cake cut. unfair.
For example, we have previously tested the "Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition", the original performance of the GeForce GTX 1080, Radeon RX Vega 64 seems to be across the Galaxy. But then, if you do not look at this extreme case, in fact, GameWorks special effects library Technology is also used by everyone, such as HBAO+.
But now it seems that NVIDIA seems to be brewing more powerful technology, and even powerful enough to achieve real-time ray tracing?
Based on the Maxwell architecture Apollo 11 Demo, the VXGI used at that time was already quite overbearing.
VideoCardz, which has been running very fast in the field of board cards, published an artwork with unknown sources on the weekends. Although the text commentary seems to simply indicate that 'NVIDIA RTX Technology' will be announced, it is seen from the illustration on the left. , This will be a technique for ray tracing, but the exact details are completely unclear.
According to VideoCardz's introduction, on local time Monday (maybe tomorrow in Beijing or later tonight), NVIDIA will release RTX Technology will be a real-time cinematic rendering technology , where 'R' and 'T' are likely to be 'Ray', 'Tracing', that is, do not know what 'X' means, and are generally those that are prefixed with 'Ex'.
Ray Tracing for GameWorks was released along with the technology. However, it is not known whether it is a technology, a brand, or a collection of technologies. The explanation given by VideoCardz is that it can bring real-time zone shadows in development. Shadow), Glossy Reflection and Ambient Occlusion These may not seem like new technologies, so the emphasis may be on 'real time'.
Image courtesy of VideoCardz
The key point is that VideoCardz said that this technology is currently in Early Access, and because Microsoft has quietly cooperated with Mimi and NVIDIA to add RTX technology to the new API, it will directly support the current Unreal, Unity, and Frostbite engines.
It is EA Games, Remedy, and 4A Games that are in need of special mention. The three developers are already in the process of trial. Therefore, it is easy to guess whether the future "Battlefield" is being passed down or "Destruction Company". The "Metro" series will be used very Sharp ray tracing technology , And it is not yet known exactly what Remedy Entertainment's work was after the end of Quantum Crush, but the light and shadow they used before in Northlight is already very powerful.
We can see more information in this artwork, For example, '(this technology represents) decades of developments in algorithms and GPUs', 'a huge step in computer graphics', but if it is really a ray tracing that we often hear, it is really very difficult. High, the amount of calculation is very large, simply cannot meet the effect of the ultra-high technical requirements today.
Even Titan V still needs a very, very large number of blocks to achieve such a high level of computing power. It would be almost impossible to achieve a graphical ray trace today, even more likely due to the specific technology. The cooperation of hardware architectures is highly hatching. It is highly similar to the algorithms and effects of ray tracing. Do not you see that the Tsela V100's tensor unit has very high floating point performance?
In fact, this is not really my guess, because this picture below writes 'based on the height of the Volta structure for ray tracing optimization' words, it seems that the time 'Only Available Beyond Pascal' is not unexpected.
Reminiscent of the GTC 2018 conference that will begin this month, I have some suspicions that the so-called ray tracing, which is very difficult to achieve, is likely to require a new architecture to obtain the best results. Currently, or a slightly older video card is likely to be You have to pass by. So tonight you can stare at NVIDIA GeForce's Youtube channel, GeForce blog, and see what mystery faces are after the veil is pulled open.
