It’s hard to hold back when you know these people are saying stupid shit then get proven how stupid the shit they really said is, really hard lol.
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Oh this one I remember. Thanks! Seems rather a backend solution with a cache modification. Even an hybrid one based on AMD patent
Take a deep look please
“A texture processor based ray tracing accelerator method and system are described. The system includes a shader, texture processor (TP) and cache, which are interconnected. The TP includes a texture address unit (TA), a texture cache processor (TCP), a filter pipeline unit and a ray intersection engine. The shader sends a texture instruction which contains ray data and a pointer to a bounded volume hierarchy (BVH) node to the TA. The TCP uses an address provided by the TA to fetch BVH node data from the cache. The ray intersection engine performs ray-BVH node type intersection testing using the ray data and the BVH node data. The intersection testing results and indications for BVH traversal are returned to the shader via a texture data return path. The shader reviews the intersection results and the indications to decide how to traverse to the next BVH node.”
Every time Sony spoke of RT they just said “Ray-Tracing” lol.
To quote Nvidia: “Hardware acceleration makes a big difference. But the real distinction isn’t between hardware and software, but between GPU acceleration with and without dedicated RT Cores.”
I’m really wary of Cerny’s claims you know why. If he brought solid proofs we can check then ok, if not it is suspicious. Like the RDNA2 based or when asked about VRS he was dancing around and no answer since then. Too much smoke.
But did he bring any metrics or datas to back up since then? He never mentionned dedicated hardware RT cores too.
Sorry but it is really too suspicious.
That approach really seems GPU-accelerated software ray tracing (muffled speak for hardware accelerated software based raytracing).
Why didn’t Sony just come out & say dedicated RT cores for PS5?
Cause theres’s a difference between hardware accelerated on the gpu shader cores, as opposed to hardware offload to dedicated RT cores on the gpu.
In fact the XSX could use either or both or cloud based RT accelerated scene data.
I am sure Sony modified the texture unit block of the GPU to handle Ray tracing easier. It isnt actually dedicated HW, it’s still done on the GPU.
PS5 will be able to run ray tracing better than if it was a pure software solution but it will still be slower than actual true dedicated HW RT cores.
That’s the reason why its called Hybrid RT since they did modify the GPU to handle RT better but they didn’t actually add any dedicated HW for it.
RT cores is truly Hardware. Look up how Nvidia describe Hardware RayTracing.
Dedicated RT cores speed up the process and are more accurate than doing it on the GPU, even if the GPU was modified to help with RT.
If your GPU has HW RT it’s going to be down to how many RT cores and possibly even how efficient your GPU/CPU is, how much of and how fast your memory is and how fast is your SSD, lots of variables.
Did Cerny show or speak bout RT cores on PS5? Nope!
Imho, that’s what I understood.
Cerny does mention ‘intersection engine’ in his road to PS5 presentation.
I don’t think he will refere the shader based system an intersection engine.
It could just be a word play (almost everything is a word play with Playstation these days) but questions should be asked.
It may end up just like ‘we believe in generation’ and ‘RDNA2 based’ or it may have all the RT stuff.
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I think we should not question clearly made communications by any platform holder when they say what is in the box.
For instance with PS5 raytracing is part of all sorts of communication materials and is also featured in games on PS5. Means, we can stop to question it.
We know the feature set of the Xbox Series very well, so no discussions or clarifications needed there.
For PS5 as said several times, the only things that I see Sony cut from the RDNA2 capabilities are:
- VRS (completely missing)
- ML RPM int8 & int4 (completely missing)
- Sampler Feedback (They may have a priority system in place)
- Mesh Shader (which they replaced with Primitive Shader)
The assumption behind that: Sony doesn’t want to talk about it nor gave any further statements about the first 2. It is fair to say you do not talk about things you do not feature.
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Thanks for the summary, prompted me to do some more digging and it looks like you are spot on SF is supported in Nvidia HW starting from Turing. And the SFS in the series consoles added HW texture filters on top to handle the case when a texture page is not yet in memory.
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Some more interesting info for you!
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I don’t know much about tech but I appreciate they’ve packed it full of powerful gear at an affordable price. Can’t wait to see what Devs get the most out of it.
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I don’t think he is trying to mislead, the man is quite humble and very talented. However I am tired of people claiming everything he said is “gospel” or can’t seem to understand that he is selling a product. Especially on the other side it gets tiresome how every word he has is stretched into something “special” far beyond what he is trying to say. This is beyond him trying to sell his design for the hardware, which I’m sure is well designed as he has experience in this field.
What irks me is that the same people that do the above? Turn around to attack the Series S without any base or fact. They are so scared that something cheaper, meant for a more casual audience, will hold back their little toy that it is downright toxic. And when you question it, they even get mods involved as to warn you for “being insensitive in a sensitive topic!” and “they are in their right to question it”. Which of course they are, but not without any base in their claims at all. Most of them wouldn’t know a matrix from a vector, when they see linear algebra they run for the hills screaming bloody murder and have no idea of what computing actually is/does.
They use numbers as “this bigger than that!” or scream that it is hard for developers. For goodness sake most of this stuff is done in testing of the Engine (of which most developers use a third party product). If a lower resolution system like the Series S, with a locked specification, would slow down development for years already? And “HOLD BACK THE GENERATION! RAH MAH TOYZZZZ! DAMN CASUALS!”? Then how in HEAVENS would these developers ever program their game for a PC market? Let alone develop systems (none games)for an embedded system or the old consoles of the time. A Megadrive is a completely different beast from an Super Nintendo, and most of the games were on par using the strengths of each console to their advantage. Systems are more complex now, but tools also got more powerful and versatile.
And no it doesn’t get harder for the artist either, they will get the limitations (vertice budget , texture memory budget,etc) and run with it. They are skilled in what they do and know a thing or two about linear algebra and signal processing themselves (you have to be if you are into image processing or 3D model art).
I hate the term “Creatives” and “STEM”, any Graphics artist for a game, knows some Math. They are skilled in their field. The split between these two are artificial and created by Economists/Managers that want to pit people against each other so they can underpay both. This is a major problem within an industry that has no end to hopeful young Engineers and artists that fall in love with the romanticized image of game development. And gets repeated by the very people I complain about here, often for fanboy reasons (“The Series S will hold mah toy back!”).
Sorry for my rant, I’ll go back to assembly coding a z80 now :P. Heh, it’s relaxing and creative as one can create art on old 8 bit systems.
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I’m seeing some furious mental gymnastics online, from people trying to downplay this news.
I can’t wait for both full-fat RDNA 2 consoles to arrive at RaytracerHQ, I have that week off work, not long to go now folks! Mesh shaders are welcome, Primitive shaders will be reported to the police. 
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Wait?! Do you have a source of the event?
While there will always be fanboys doing there thing I would not take as an indication of the general gaming populace. Im sure theres plenty of xbox fans who were saying in 2013 the hardware difference is so small it makes practically no difference who are now saying the opposite. I think the best thing to do is not go to places which partake in fanboyism.
That is very interesting!! MS did say they did more custimaztions to the XSX gpu than pc like the SFS ability. Have a RDNA 2.0 gpu in their consoles is going to pay off huge for us and devs graphically esp years down the line
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At 22:35
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I still think it’s a rdna1 gpu with some custom/preliminary features from rdna2 like RT.
Something like they didn’t get the exact final version that will ship on rdna2 but got an earlier version to modify to their needs.
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This can’t be stressed enough!
https://twitter.com/DualShockers/status/1322204593703538689?s=19
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Honestly, Cerny was clear in his confirmation. It’s HW based RT. I think they would shy away from perf metrics because it would be worse than Xbox’s. Not really anything worth building a conspiracy theory around!
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He never said hardware based Ray Tracing himself word for word. Lol. But acceleration in the gpu. That’s why technically he is not wrong but playing with words again but I can bet you anything PS5 has not dedicated RT cores.
For information if I’m not mistaken intersection engine is an algorithm not hardware thing it is software. Even the XSX has it afaik.
Those aren’t all RDNA2 features. There is a distinction to be made bt RDNA2 features (i.e. features ya gotta have to be considered full RDNA2 spec) and other tech that just happens to be in the cards AMD just announced (DX12U features aren’t RDNA2 features, and some 6000 Series features are unique to those cards like Infinity Cache).
Also, Sony didn’t “replace” mesh shaders with primitive shaders. Mesh shaders replace the whole geometry pipeline. Sony updated the existing GE in AMD’s tech to be more programmable (still less so than mesh shaders iirc). They likely used GE and tweaked it because mesh shaders for AMD were not quite ready yet (as they likely relied on MS/DX team’s timeline there). Same with SF; the PS5 has nothing similar to that as far as we know.
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He said there is RT hardware present. And Sony has company-internal docs confirming it too. It’s hw RT.
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