Real-time ray-tracing
The last announcement involved long-term partner Autodesk, who will continue to integrate CUDA technology into 3ds Max. Though the popular modelling and design package already makes use of some GPU-acceleration, the presentation focused on the implementation of a new ray-tracing algorithm, iRay. This was said to be the world's first physically-accurate - as opposed to an approximation - photo-realistic ray-tracer and was shown rendering lifelike scenes in under a minute using an NVIDIA graphics-card. While the approximation algorithm could take hours running on a CPU, an accurate low-detail image could be generated by the GPU in a matter of seconds.
The final demonstration showed a project that Autodesk is working on for the future, where a cluster of 32 GPUs - installed in servers some 2,500 miles away from the conference - were rendering a photo realistic scene in near real time. Accessing the system through a web browser running on a mainstream laptop, the presenter was able to pan around and modify a room that would converge almost instantly, despite being rendered with fully-accurate photo-realistic ray-tracing.
NVIDIA is continuing to push CUDA as the platform for high-performance computing and seems to be making some key strategic partnerships to achieve its goals. We'll be sure to bring you all of the latest developments as GTC 2010 continues this week.
