Leaked: AMD’s RDNA 4 Ray Tracing Gets Massive Upgrade, Hints at PS5 Pro Features
Previous reports have indicated that AMD will introduce a new ray tracing hardware module design with the RDNA 4 architecture, employing a completely different implementation compared to RDNA 3. In contrast, RDNA 3 merely built upon the ray tracing capabilities of RDNA 2 with some architectural modifications, without substantial changes.
Recently, a user revealed that AMD will incorporate several new ray tracing features in the RDNA 4 architecture, and it is rumored that Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro will support most, if not all, of these features. The enhancements in ray tracing with RDNA 4 are reported to include:
- Doubling the ray tracing interaction engines to enhance the GPU’s parallel processing capabilities for ray tracing.
- Ray tracing instance code conversion, enabling the GPU to handle geometric transformations such as translation, rotation, and scaling more efficiently.
- 64-bit ray tracing nodes, improving processing efficiency and reducing the use of video memory and system memory.
- Ray tracing Tri Pair optimization, which reduces the computational load required for ray-triangle interactions.
- Modified marker encoding for barycentric coordinates to simplify node detection in programs.
- Improved BVH (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) to expedite the grouping of scene geometry.
- Enhanced support for OBB (Oriented Bounding Box) and instance node interactions in ray tracing, potentially providing higher precision and efficiency through smaller bounding volumes.
Since January, AMD has been notably reticent about RDNA 4 architecture in public forums, especially regarding specific improvements in ray tracing capabilities. During this period, AMD has focused more on promoting the new-generation Zen 5 series CPU architecture, with mentions of the more distant Zen 6 series.
Rumors suggest that Sony plans to release the PlayStation 5 Pro in late November, while the Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs with RDNA 4 architecture are expected to arrive early next year. Consequently, console gamers may experience the advancements brought by RDNA 4 architecture earlier than PC gamers.
