The new AMD graphics cards based on the Navi architecture will be launched shortly, but they will not support real-time ray tracing hardware. It appears that the red team is already working on a hybrid version between ray tracing software and hardware and has provided the first details.
According to AMD, this hybrid will solve several problems found in cards with ray tracing hardware, bringing greater performance improvements in games that use this type of technology.
The hybrid approach (a fixed function acceleration for a single BVH tree node and the use of a shader unit for program processing) solves problems with pure hardware and/or pure software solutions.
Flexibility is maintained because the shader unit can continue to control the total bill and can dispense with fixed functional hardware when needed, while still taking advantage of the performance of fixed functional hardware. In addition, using the texture processor infrastructure will eliminate the large buffers for lightning storage and BVH caching normally required in a hardware Ray Tracing solution, as VGPRs and the existing texture cache can be used instead, significantly reducing the range and complexity of the hardware solution.
AMD has already patented this hybrid model so we could see it on the next generation consoles, PlayStation 4 and Xbox Scarlett, which have already been announced to support ray tracing and use Navi.
AMD patented this technology as a “ray tracing accelerator system and method based on a texture processor”.
Source: DSOGaming