The potential for real-time ray tracing has been a major talking point in 3D graphics ever since Intel announced its plans for the x86-based multi-core Larrabee discrete graphics chip at IDF in 2007 . However, a new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons that it’s already uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that it saysCaustic’s management team includes previous employees of Autodesk, Apple, ATI, Intel and Nvidia, and the company has already developed a chip for accelerating ray tracing. Called the CausticOne, the new chip isn’t targeted at gamers, but is instead aimed at 3D professionals in the film, game development, automotive and consumer product design industries. This isn’t surprising, given that current gaming APIs are based on rasterisation, but Caustic is still making some impressive claims about its technology, while not being afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing.says Caustic, referring to companies such as Nvidia which recently demonstrated real-time ray tracing using CUDA . However, the company adds thatAccording to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can’t be accelerated on a standard GPU because of incoherent rays. Caustic explains thatConversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOneExplaining why traditional algorithms and parallel processing isn’t the best system for ray tracing, Caustic said that theyTo accompany the CausticOne, the company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL. The API will feature Caustic’s unique ray tracing extensions, and Caustic says it will alsoThe company says that the CausticOne (which has 15 patents pending on the technology and algorithms used) basically off-loads raytracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray traced scene much more quickly.The CausticOne is due to be released in April 2009, and Caustic claims that it will speed up the ray tracing process by an average of 20x. However, the company is making wilder claims about its second-generation Caustic product, due to be released early next year, which it says will offerAccording to Caustic, the huge speed jump is due to the company implementing its own patent-pending ray tracing algorithms in a piece of silicon.Explaining the need for ray tracing acceleration, Caustic Graphics’ CEO, Ken Daniels said thatAccording to Daniels,Meanwhile, Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research was keen to congratulate Caustic Graphics on its new technology.said Peddie,Do you work with ray tracers in your field of work, and would you be interested in a ray tracing accelerator such as this? Plus, when do you think we’ll ever see real-time ray tracing in games? As always, let us know your thoughts in the forums