Intel’s Roger Chandler, VP of Core and Visual Computing Group, has reiterated Intel’s curiosity in real-time ray tracing – the ‘holy grail’ of graphics expertise. While Nvidia staves off RTX nonbelievers, Intel’s Chandler, in a GDC accomplice interview with the Game Developers Conference, reiterated his perception that we are going to “eventually” see this graphics tech hit the mainstream.
“Eventually we’ll see tech like real-time ray tracing (which Intel has been working on for many years) finally hit the mainstream,” Chandler says. Intel’s work within the discipline does certainly return a great distance. Over a decade in the past on the Intel Developer Forum, Intel demonstrated real-time ray tracing utilizing a model of Quake Wars. The firm additionally demonstrated ray tracing with an Intel Xeon Nehalem EX chip not lengthy after.
But with out devoted graphics, Intel has been missing the pure compute energy to compete with the likes of Nvidia and AMD on this discipline. Nvidia has already launched graphics playing cards meant to drive ray tracing to the fore within the RTX 20-series, however even AMD has expressed interest in ray tracing as of late regardless of the rapid lack of devoted {hardware}.
But that may all change quickly sufficient. Intel has been hiring a number of the greatest most prolific engineers round to work on its upcoming discrete graphics product. From what we all know thus far, this GPU shall be constructed from the building blocks provided by integrated Gen11 graphics.
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Intel hopes to degree up its Game Dev Program. “As Intel rapidly evolves CPU, GPU, and platform technologies, devs will find it easier to unleash all of that compute power,” Chandler explains in the GDC Q&A.
And all that compute energy may be dropped at bear on games in several methods.
“CPU and accelerator-driven client-side AI will improve the believability of in-game NPCs,” he says, “and help coach players to become better eSports competitors.”
That accelerated shopper aspect AI seems like simply the job for Intel’s discrete GPU. AMD additionally not too long ago hinted its GPUs have the flexibility to utilise brute compute energy, together with Microsoft’s DirectML, to implement Nvidia RTX-like features.
With AMD additionally encroaching on the inexperienced staff’s territory, will that imply Intel begins preventing on Nvidia’s ray traced turf proper off the bat? We can’t say for positive, however Intel has a behavior of going through its graphics merchandise in direction of the compute aspect of issues, and that might play proper into Microsoft DXR help come 2020.
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