In January 2025, NVIDIA introduced some new Ray Tracing techniques using Neural Shaders. And, to the surprise of no one, AMD has filed similar patents for Ray Tracing. So, let’s see what the red team will bring to gamers.
The key features of these patents are Neural Network-based Ray Tracing, Traversal and Procedural Shader Bounds, Ray Tracing Structure Traversal Based on Work Items, and Lossy Geometry Compression Using Interpolated Normals for Use in BVH Building and Rendering.
Diving into more details, Neural Network-based Ray Tracing seems similar to what NVIDIA is doing with Neural Shaders. So, I guess PC gamers will be fine with this tech now. After all, some criticized NVIDIA for introducing it as a new “gimmick.” The point is that AMD appears to be going all in with Ray Tracing for its future hardware. In theory, RDNA5 and the next-gen consoles (PS6 and the next Xbox) should be more capable of running ray-traced or path-traced games.
This also proves how far ahead NVIDIA is. The same thing happened with DLSS. NVIDIA first introduced it, but AMD followed up one or two years later. Now if only there were any RTX50 GPUs to buy.
I don’t expect games to support these new RT techniques anytime soon. We’re likely looking at things that may happen in two or three years from now. Still, it can give you an idea of where things are heading.
Here are links for all of AMD’s RT patents. They all have brief descriptions so you can learn what AMD is trying to achieve with them.
Neural Network based Ray Tracing and many other RT patents published by AMD, hinting at future console and gaming technologies.
byu/JohnBarry_Dost inGamingLeaksAndRumours
