Speculation that Intel might implement hardware-accelerated ray tracing support in its future Intel Xe GPU family has been around for quite some time. The company later confirmed this but only for data center GPUs. Now, clear evidence of ray tracing support has been found in the drivers for Intel’s consumer GPUs.
Network source with the alias discovered mentions of structures like Ray Trace HW Accelerator, DXR_RAYTRACING_INSTANCE_DESC, and D3D12_RAYTRACING_GEOMETRY_FLAGS in the code of certain Intel graphics driver software. These three structures indicate that future Intel graphics cards may indeed support hardware-accelerated ray tracing, likely not just for data center GPU accelerators.
The source does not specify exactly where these 'references' to ray tracing were found. However, it appears they were discovered in the code for the Xe Software Development Kit (SDV), which Intel has already begun distributing among various independent software vendors worldwide. With more developers expected to access SDV in the coming months, new details about ray tracing and other capabilities of future Intel graphics cards may emerge.
It is also worth noting that Intel already has some experience with ray tracing. Back in 2009, at its own developer forum, Intel showcased ray tracing using a graphics card developed under the unfortunate project It is quite possible that some of the old developments will be transferred to the Xe graphics processors.
It is important to remember that in the consumer segment, Xe graphics processors will be divided into two categories: Xe-LP with performance not exceeding mid-range and Xe-HP with high performance. It is highly likely that chips from the Xe-HP category will support hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
Source: 3dnews.ru
