AMD patents hint at significant ray tracing improvements in future GPU architectures

In context: Previous generations of AMD graphics cards have lagged behind Nvidia's in ray tracing performance, but Team Red's most recent Radeon RX 9000 GPUs have made significant strides in closing the gap. Numerous recent patents suggest the company is only just getting started, with future hardware potentially making ray tracing and path tracing more accessible.

Reddit user MrMPFR's analysis of AMD patents from the past year and a half reveals that the company is serious about treating ray tracing as the future of real-time graphics rendering. While Nvidia has driven most of the technology's progress over the last several years, Team Red might finally be closing the gap – and perhaps even pulling ahead.

In its push to improve ray tracing performance across a wider range of hardware, AMD has filed numerous patents since around January 2023. Over a longer period, it has also hired ray ...