Nvidia’s CEO claims that console ray tracing is a reaction to Geforce RTX
Nvidia’s CEO claims that console ray tracing is a reaction to Geforce RTX
Next year, new consoles from both Sony and Microsoft are due to release. Both of these systems are due to feature hardware-accelerated raytracing. In Nvidia’s Q3 2020 earnings call, the company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, claimed that this addition was a reaction to Geforce RTX, saying that “the next-generation consoles had to stutter step and include ray tracing”.Â
This statement suggests that realtime ray tracing was not a target for both next-generation consoles initially, with the release of Nvidia’s Turing architecture acting as a turning point for the industry.Â
With both consoles next-generation consoles supporting raytracing hardware, it is clear that raytracing is where the future of graphics technology lies. Huang also called the Geforce RTX series a “home run”, later saying that “there are several hundred million PC gamers in the world that don’t have the benefits of it, and I’m looking forward to upgrading them.” This showcases the confidence that Huang has in the future of Geforce and RTX ray tracing.Â
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What must be noted here is that Jensen Huang cannot know what AMD’s GPU roadmap looks like, and therefore cannot know how that impacted the development of both Sony and Microsoft’s next-generation consoles. Given Microsoft’s development of its DXR ray tracing API for DirectX 12, it is probable that the company’s Xbox console division was considering raytracing hardware before the release of Nvidia’s RTX hardware.  Â
Huang’s comments also imply that AMD has managed to create raytracing acceleration tech within a staggeringly short timeframe, which is unlikely. Microsoft has likely been co-operating with AMD since the early days of DirectX 12’s DXR API to deliver hardware-based Ray tracing acceleration on Radeon graphics hardware eventually. This would mean that AMD has probably been working on raytracing acceleration hardware since before Nvidia’s RTX launch in 2018.Â
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