AMD SVP Talks Radeon's Ray Tracing Response

[bit_user]

As with tensor cores, I think AMD was also caught off-guard by Nvidia's RT cores. If so, it will take them at least two generations before they have a chip early enough in the design pipeline to accommodate a response.

Nvidia is actually the one who will play catch up... because they have no Infinity Fabric. We've seen it during the presentation, Infinity Fabric second generation is now part of the GPU architecture.

They have NVLink/NVLink2. With Volta, it gives them 150 GB/sec of bandwidth (each direction) vs. 100 GB/sec that AMD has said 7 nm Vega can support.

That said, I prefer AMD's PCIe-based approach to Nvidia's proprietary solution. But let's try to be realistic.

Chiplet is the future and Intel/Nvidia are not even there at the start line.

Hmm... Intel has EMIB and whatever Cascade Lake AP uses. Both Intel and Nvidia have shipped solutions using HBM/HMC. I don't know what else you really need, in order to believe they can go this direction if they wanted.

Turing could have been done with Infinity Fabric, easier, cheaper and faster. Nvidia is about 3-4 years behind of their first chiplet design.

Are you fabricating this out of thin air? If not, then what's your source?

I disagree that Turing would be either faster or more energy-efficient as a multi-chip solution. The only upside of going that route would be cost.

Intel, at least 2 years before EMIB first implementation.

Really? I thought their Kaby Lake-G processors used EMIB.

 

[bit_user]

Anyone that says Ray-tracing is a gimmick has no idea how 3D graphics works. This is a step we should have taken 10 years ago.

Huh? If Turing can barely manage ray tracing at 1080p (according to rumors), what makes you think it was technically feasible to do before now - let alone 10 whole years ago?

 

[bit_user]

Ray tracing is the future and we should embrace it. However, AMD and Nvidia need to recognize that developers are the key to us consumers embracing tray tracing. It's important that the two of them make sure to come up with a solution that works on both their products so that developers see a larger install base to build towards.

Well, I think that's MS' rationale for introducing DXR. Also, there are equivalent Vulkan extensions being worked on.

My main concern is how broad Nvidia's patents are. Do they leave enough room for AMD to offer a competitive solution within those same APIs?

 

[bit_user]

Textures in 3d games was a gimmick too, way to cost intensive in the beginning.
Shadows in 3d games was a gimmick too, way to cost intensive in the beginning.

Woah. Just how far back are you going? Textures and shadows predated 3D hardware. The first-gen 3D gaming cards (and consoles!) supported textures. Half-decent shadows probably required multi-texturing, which came soon after.

Shaders in 3d games was a gimmick too, way to cost intensive in the beginning.

Granted, shaders took a little while to happen, even though the idea goes way back.

 

[bit_user]

Wouldn't it be wise if they just built RT chip in monitor to make it work or make pci card with RT without buying whole RT video card

I doubt you could easily or cheaply separate it. A pure ray tracing chip would require a lot of memory bandwidth and fast communication with the main GPU, probably requiring it to be on the same card. And that card would probably cost even more than existing Turing GPUs.

 

[cryoburner]

Anyone that says Ray-tracing is a gimmick has no idea how 3D graphics works. This is a step we should have taken 10 years ago.

Huh? If Turing can barely manage ray tracing at 1080p (according to rumors), what makes you think it was technically feasible to do before now - let alone 10 whole years ago?

No need for rumors anymore. DXR effects have been tested in Battlefield V by some tech review sites, and the results are most impressive...ly bad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpZmH0_1gWQ

Want your new $800 RTX 2080 to perform like a $200 graphics card? Just set DXR effects to "Low".

4K, you say? How does a smooth 30fps average sound? Or with the effects on "High", you'll get closer to 20fps for that competitive edge. These marginally lower frame rates with RTX ON are truly a small price to pay for somewhat nicer reflections! And just think, once Tomb Raider gets RTX support added in, there will be raytraced shadows! Maybe with the next generation of cards there can be both at the same time!