Ray tracing technology is here to stay and everyone is trying to adapt to this new technology. Khronos Group has announced that the necessary specifications have been integrated into Vulkan for the execution of RayTracing. Specifically, the GLSL and SPIR-V extensions have been added. This is the first open source API to implement RayTracing by brute force or through dedicated cores.
NVIDIA, for example, offers ray tracing technology using dedicated cores called RT Cores. It seems that AMD also integrates dedicated cores to support this technology, which has a high cost in terms of performance. Unfortunately AMD has not yet finished explaining how this technology works in its graphics cards.
[amazon box=»B07WP6TYQ3″ title=»PowerColor RX 5700 XT Red Devil » star_rating=»none» template=»table»]Vulkan now fully supports RayTracing
An announcement, on the other hand, very important. Vulkan is an API endorsed by AMD that benefits Radeon graphics. Not many games are betting on this API, although it is increasing interest from developers. The full implementation of RayTracing in Vulkan should make it easier to run ray tracing on AMD graphics.
These extensions were initially released as interim versions in March 2020. Since then we have received and incorporated feedback from hardware vendors and software developers, both within Khronos and the wider industry, but the general shape of the API and the functionality provided have not fundamentally changed. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and used the temporary extensions and especially to those who provided feedback.
The release of the extension specs is just the beginning of the rollout of Vulkan RayTracing. In the coming days and weeks, additional ecosystem components, such as shader toolchains and validation layers, will be updated with support for RayTracing functionality to ensure developers can easily use these extensions in their applications. The progress of these ecosystem updates can be followed on GitHub. This will culminate in the release of the Vulkan SDK (1.2.162.0 or later) with support for Khronos Vulkan RayTracing in mid-December.
Official announcement
