Tech ARP - Ray Tracing To Debut In DirectX 11
"According to a confidential source, Microsoft has decided to switch to
ray-tracing in DirectX 11. They also plan to have DirectX 11 ready in
time to debut with Windows Vista Service Pack 2. To do that, they have
also decided to base it on the x86 architecture and Intel's ray-tracing
engine. There are rumours that Intel did more than just "suggest" it to
Microsoft, but that's another story altogether.
As DirectX 11 is a work in progress, Microsoft does not have an exact
timeline. But the source claims that DirectX 11 could be part of Windows
Vista by late 2008. Development is expected to be very short as much of
the work had already been done by Intel. Coincidence?
You need not worry about your old raster-based DirectX 10 or older games
or graphics cards. DirectX 11 will continue to sup****t rasterization. It
just includes sup****t for ray-tracing as well. There will be two DirectX
11 modes, based on sup****t by the application and the hardware (see
table on the right).
Obviously, DirectX 11 would be a great boon to everyone, especially
Microsoft and Intel. AMD and ATI would come out pretty well too. But
NVIDIA might be in some trouble.
As the ray-tracing component of DirectX 11 will be designed around the
x86 architecture, Intel and even AMD-ATI would have no problem coming up
with processors and graphics cards that sup****t DirectX 11. NVIDIA, on
the other hand, will have to start from ground up or licence some
technologies from Intel or buy up VIA's x86 team (ex-Cyrix). Obviously,
they cannot do any business with AMD!
What will NVIDIA do? Well, that's something to watch out for. We are
pretty sure that NVIDIA would have heard of Microsoft's decision to use
Intel's work as the basis for DirectX 11 by now. We bet those guys are
scrambling to come up with a solution. With that said, DirectX 11 and
ray-tracing are still months away from reality. NVIDIA may have been
caught with their pants down, but one can still do a pretty good shuffle
even if one is not fast enough to pull up the pants to run.
Let's take a look at what some industry reps have to say about DirectX
11 and its sup****t for ray-tracing."
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=526&pgno=1
|
