Imagination announces ray tracing technology for licensing

  

The technology is part of PowerVR’s ongoing GPU roadmap which delivers optimal PPA (Power Performance Area) solutions.

The PowerVR Ray Tracing architecture is a high-efficiency approach for the processing of billions of rays per second (“gigarays”). It makes it realistic for System on Chip (SoC) manufacturers to offer ray tracing capable hardware within a range of power and thermal envelopes. The technology is intended for adding realistic ray traced light, shadow and transparency capabilities to traditional GPUs or even creating full ray tracing solutions.

According to Nigel Leeder, EVP PowerVR, Imagination Technologies: “Ray tracing today is where 3D graphics were just before we first introduced PowerVR GPUs for mobile. The solutions in the market are fine for PC and console but don't offer the efficiency for mobile, AR or automotive applications.

"Where Imagination’s approach differs is that it is designed from the ground up for power efficiency with the ability to scale from battery-powered embedded designs to large-scale server farms. We are confident that ray tracing is going to happen across many applications, and in a ‘5G world’ it is likely to be very disruptive. Our ray tracing architecture matches much larger and less power efficient solutions gigaray for gigaray.”

Imagination PowerVR Ray Tracing technology available for licensing today includes:

  • Patents
  • Architecture
  • GPU integration references
  • Standards based API support for easy application integration

Imagination holds over 220 patents and applications based on its industry-leading ray tracing technology.

Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing IP technology is available now for licensing. It can be used in conjunction with a wide range of GPU architectures, including Imaginations’ PowerVR graphics cores.