Ray tracing support in Intel Xe - a translation error, nobody promised that.

Recently, most news websites, including ours, reported that at the recent Intel Developer Conference 2019 in Tokyo, Intel representatives promised hardware ray tracing support in the upcoming discrete Xe accelerator. However, this turned out to be untrue. As Intel later commented on the situation, all such claims are based on faulty machine translations of materials from Japanese sources.

An Intel representative contacted PCWorld yesterday and provided an extended comment stating that no announcements regarding hardware ray tracing support in the Intel Xe graphics accelerator were made at the Tokyo event. Furthermore, during the presentation where the media perceived such promises, absolutely nothing was said about ray tracing. 

The misunderstanding arose because reviewers attempted to translate a Japanese news article from MyNavi.jp, which discussed Intel's graphical presentation. As a result, due to machine translation, the site's speculation about the graphical capabilities of the fighting game Tekken 7 somehow transformed into a promise of ray tracing in future Intel accelerators. However, as an Intel representative later commented, all of this is a grand misunderstanding. The mentioned presentation did not mention ray tracing at all and was not related to either the architecture of the discrete Intel Xe graphics or the integrated Gen12 accelerator from the upcoming Tiger Lake processors. Moreover, the statements about the targeted performance of Intel Xe graphics (60 fps at Full HD resolution) are also a translation error.

However, this does not mean that Intel categorically denies its intention to implement hardware support for ray tracing in its graphics. The company simply denies the fact that it officially promised it, but it is possible that it is just not the right time for such statements. In other words, Intel wants to convey to the public that it is still too early to talk about any specific properties of the company's upcoming discrete GPU. And what it will be like, we will learn somewhat later.

For the record, a similar incident with incorrect translation of statements about Intel Xe is not the first such occurrence. A few months ago, due to a mistaken translation of an interview with Raja Koduri to the Russian-speaking channel PRO Hi-Tech, a myth arose that Intel Xe graphics cards would cost around $200, which Intel representatives also had to refute.

Kilde: 3dnews.ru