AMD is poised to revolutionize ray tracing with its innovative approach to path tracing, thanks to the introduction of a new dedicated hardware block in its upcoming AMD Radeon gaming GPU technology. This advancement, developed in collaboration with Sony, features the Radiance Core, which AMD claims will elevate “lighting performance to a whole new level” in contemporary gaming experiences.
Transforming Ray Tracing
Despite AMD’s recent strides, the company has faced challenges in the realm of path tracing, particularly when compared to Nvidia’s cutting-edge Blackwell chips. Recent tests, such as the Doom The Dark Ages path tracing evaluation, have highlighted this disparity. However, with the Radiance Core, AMD aims to bridge this gap by relocating a crucial segment of the ray tracing pipeline to a dedicated hardware block.
Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Group, shared insights into the company’s two-year journey of reimagining the path tracing pipeline, encompassing both hardware and software innovations. In a joint announcement with Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the Sony PS5, Huynh characterized the Radiance Core as “a new dedicated hardware block designed for unified light transport.”
Cerny elaborated on the core’s transformative capabilities, emphasizing the shift of ray traversal calculations into hardware. Previously, AMD’s technology relied heavily on CPU and GPU shader cores for ray traversal tasks. “To perform ray tracing today, a shader program has to juggle two very different responsibilities,” Cerny explained. “One is ray traversal, digging through complex data structures to locate where the millions of rays being cast hit the millions of triangles in the scene geometry. When there are intersections, that same shader program has to also be doing its usual work of shading the scene, using texture and lighting information, and the like.”
The introduction of the Radiance Core alleviates the burden of ray traversal calculations from both the CPU and GPU shader cores. Huynh noted that this shift “frees up the CPU for geometry and simulation and lets the GPU focus on what it does best – shading and lighting.” The outcome, according to Cerny, is “a significant speed boost” derived not only from having the traversal logic embedded in hardware but also from the Radiance Core’s ability to operate independently from standard GPU shader cores.
Moreover, Cerny hinted at “other features in the works” aimed at enhancing ray tracing performance, including “flexible and efficient data structures for the geometry being ray traced.” While it remains to be seen whether this new GPU hardware block will enable AMD to catch up with or surpass Nvidia in the path tracing arena, the company is clearly making strides. With FSR Redstone also on the horizon, AMD appears to be closing the remaining gaps in its technology.
For those considering a GPU upgrade, it may be worth exploring the best graphics cards currently available. While AMD’s new graphics cards promise impressive performance, particularly for the latest games featuring path tracing, they also represent a compelling value proposition in the gaming market.
As the industry evolves, the question remains: Is AMD on the right track? Engage with our community on Discord to share your thoughts about the future of path tracing in gaming.
