AMD Will Redesign Hardware for Ray Tracing on RDNA 4

According to a trustworthy source with GPU leaks, AMD’s next generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture is anticipated to have an entirely new ray tracing engine called Kepler L2. AMD’s current hardware method to ray tracing still heavily relies on shader engines, but it uses a component known as the Ray Accelerator to handle the most compute-intensive part of the ray intersection and testing process. With RDNA 2, the business introduced the ray accelerator—its first architecture to satisfy the requirements of DirectX 12 Ultimate—and enhanced the part with RDNA 3, improving the ray intersection performance by 50% over RDNA 2 by refining specific areas of its ray testing.

According to Kepler L2, RDNA 4 will include a ray tracing hardware solution that is radically different from the ones on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. This could further relieve the load on the shader engines by shifting more of the ray tracing workflow to fixed-function hardware. In the second half of 2024, AMD is anticipated to release RDNA 4 along with its upcoming lineup of discrete Radeon RX GPUs. Considering the rumors of a highly anticipated AMD announcement at Computex, where the firm is rumored to reveal the “Zen 5” CPU microarchitecture on server and client CPUs, we may also expect some discussion of RDNA 4.