1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

News New graphics firm promises real-time ray tracing

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 12 Mar 2009.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

    Joined:
    3 Apr 2007
    Posts:
    11,346
    Likes Received:
    316
  2. GFC

    GFC What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    7 Nov 2008
    Posts:
    118
    Likes Received:
    0
    It's for pros only.. not really anything interesting for the average guy.. :/
     
  3. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

    Joined:
    9 May 2004
    Posts:
    7,548
    Likes Received:
    1,786
    The next PhysX?
     
  4. p3n

    p3n What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    31 Jan 2002
    Posts:
    778
    Likes Received:
    1
    Seems odd to make a product that would surely come close to saturating whatever BUS it plans to communicate on, another chip best sat next to the CPU die imo (gogo intel/amd)!
     
  5. Star*Dagger

    Star*Dagger What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    30 Nov 2007
    Posts:
    882
    Likes Received:
    11
    I am interested. I'd like to see raytrace level games and OS's.
     
  6. Bauul

    Bauul Sir Bongaminge

    Joined:
    7 Apr 2007
    Posts:
    2,173
    Likes Received:
    38
    Pictures or not true. Whilst in theory it sounds great, this kind of "miricale breakthrough" by a tiny, unheard of company rarely results in anything worth talking about. Remember the tiny start-up that invented perpetual motion?
     
  7. Skiddywinks

    Skiddywinks Minimodder

    Joined:
    10 Aug 2008
    Posts:
    932
    Likes Received:
    8
    No. Caustic are using an open source API here. Anyone and their dog can have a go, which is great for the market and why PhysX failed.
     
  8. DarkLord7854

    DarkLord7854 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    22 Jun 2005
    Posts:
    4,643
    Likes Received:
    121
    I bet it'll get snapped up by a bigger company.. probably Intel since they've invested so much into raytracing
     
  9. Yemerich

    Yemerich I can has PERSUADETRON?

    Joined:
    15 Sep 2004
    Posts:
    1,114
    Likes Received:
    36
    Optical physics have always benn the great vilain for people that worl with rendering. You can jump from a 5 min rendering scene to a 15 min scene just by adding some secondary bounces. And indeed it makes a HUGE difference. PhysX is "just" an algorithym for "mechanical" phisics, we are talking here of adults play.
    I really doubt this kind of stuff will hit games anytime soon (at least 2 years on the go), because the actual engines would have to adapt TONS of codes to include this new algorithym. But again, its just matter of time untill we see games rendering real-time with the quality of a "Beowulf, the movie"-like game.. Perhaps a LONG time, but still just a matter of time
     
  10. HourBeforeDawn

    HourBeforeDawn a.k.a KazeModz

    Joined:
    26 Oct 2006
    Posts:
    2,637
    Likes Received:
    6
    this is what nVidia is really afraid of and why they keep bad mouthing ray tracing as it uses x86 technologies which Intel and AMD/ATI wont have issues implementing into their graphics cards and why nVidia is trying to make their own x86 cpu dispite bad mouthing how "useless" it is lol but thats nVidia for you, bad mouth what you cant do to trick the people but secretly try to make it because you know thats where things are heading.
     
  11. [USRF]Obiwan

    [USRF]Obiwan What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    9 Apr 2003
    Posts:
    1,721
    Likes Received:
    5
    Well like everything else I stand by: "seeing is believing"
     
  12. eeevan

    eeevan Dremel Master

    Joined:
    21 Oct 2007
    Posts:
    313
    Likes Received:
    5
    Oh come on... What a pathetically laughable statement.

    Many a "tiny, unheard of company" have evolved into massive corporations after breaking into the market with a catalystic, breakthrough technology.

    The fact that you cited a perpetual motion related startup just makes me lol.


    fail.
     
  13. SuperNova

    SuperNova What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    13 Nov 2007
    Posts:
    19
    Likes Received:
    0
    Well its always nice with new inventions, not to mention another competitor on the market. Even though i have some questions about how fast this card actually will be. They say 200 times today's fastest graphiccard which are highly parallel. If we take a single card, (not X2, GX2 and so on) they have about 1Tflops (4870 @ 1.2). I'm having a hard time to see a card with the equivalent of 200Tflop coming out ext year... Therefor it would be really fun to know the estimated computation power of this card, just to see how much comes from optimizations in the soft and hardware.


    With a card specially designed for raytracing will probably not handle rasterization very well (if the cards don't have 200Tflop of raw power of course and emulates, like larrabee is said to do). This will probably be the the biggest problems for entering the gaming industry since it will limit the use to games relying solely on raytracing. For the 3D-modeling industry it will probably do wonders (if it performs as promised).

    5 computers with 4 cards each would give the equivalent of 4 Pflops (double that if they have 4870x2 in mind when saying 200x), I7 965 is around 50Gflops.

    But no mater ow they achieve this speed its great!
     
  14. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

    Joined:
    9 May 2004
    Posts:
    7,548
    Likes Received:
    1,786
    They won't enter the gaming market I guess, not before 2010. And even then it'll be hard for them.
     
  15. Bauul

    Bauul Sir Bongaminge

    Joined:
    7 Apr 2007
    Posts:
    2,173
    Likes Received:
    38

    Aww bless. Come on then, give me an example of a tiny start-up company that promised an incredible technological breakthrough none of the market leaders had managed, that actually turned out to a) work, b) be commercially viable and c) not a complete failure.

    Either they're exagerating the benefits of the new software, or they'll be snapped up by one of the big players faster than you can say "ray-tracing", and we'll never hear of them again.
     
  16. steveo_mcg

    steveo_mcg What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    26 May 2005
    Posts:
    5,841
    Likes Received:
    80
    Google, MS err nah thats the only two i can think off

    Though both aided by being an entry in to a fairly new market.
     
  17. gmmail1980

    gmmail1980 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    21 Apr 2008
    Posts:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
  18. DXR_13KE

    DXR_13KE BananaModder

    Joined:
    14 Sep 2005
    Posts:
    9,139
    Likes Received:
    382
    i can expand its memory?
     
  19. Peet42

    Peet42 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    14 Mar 2009
    Posts:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    What? Aren't they still going...? ;-D
     
  20. Anakha

    Anakha Minimodder

    Joined:
    6 Sep 2002
    Posts:
    587
    Likes Received:
    7
    They're going to have major problems with their pending patents. Look at Saarcor, the RPU, and OpenRT.
     
Tags: Add Tags

Share This Page