OTOY and Imagination unveil breakthrough PowerVR Ray Tracing hardware platform for cinematic real time rendering

OctaneRender 4 prototype achieves 100+ million rays/second on a 2 watt PowerVR Ray Tracing mobile GPU core - a 10x increase in ray-tracing performance/watt compared to GPGPU compute ray tracing in OctaneRender 3

July 22, 2016 -- SIGGRAPH 2016 – OTOY, Inc and Imagination Technologies are thrilled to announce a breakthrough hardware accelerated rendering platform that integrates Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing technology with OTOY’s forthcoming OctaneRender 4 software for VR, games and cinematic content creation.

OctaneRender 4, running on the current PowerVR Wizard GR6500 Ray Tracing hardware, is able to trace over 100 million rays per second in fully dynamic scenes, within a power envelope suitable for lightweight mobile, VR and AR glasses. According to Imagination, these results are just the tip of the iceberg. The company expects performance to significantly increase based on improvements already in the pipeline.

OctaneRender 4 with Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing hardware delivers a 10x increase in ray tracing performance per watt over the best GPGPU ray tracing implementations pioneered by OTOY’s OctaneRender and Brigade Engine. This performance boost combined with the incredibly low energy consumption of the PowerVR GPU means the chip traces rays orders of magnitude more efficiently than a workstation GPU. This allows unprecedented photorealism in game engines with OctaneRender integration, such as Unity and Unreal Engine, and dramatically improves rendering speed in over 22 Octane-enabled content creation applications – including Autodesk 3DS Max and Maya, LightWave, Cinema4D, Blender, Modo, Adobe After Effects and Nuke.

“Accelerated ray tracing is a game changer that will massively disrupt GPU rendering,” said OTOY CEO Jules Urbach. “It is a major reason why OTOY is merging Brigade and OctaneRender 4 next year, which will bring real time cinematic path tracing to both Unity and Unreal Engine. We feel this is a huge milestone in helping the games industry move beyond legacy rasterization frameworks built on OpenGL, Vulkan or DirectX. We’re excited about the possibilities this will open up for true physically correct rendering in gaming, VR and mixed/augmented reality. As PowerVR Ray Tracing gets deployed from consumer devices to the cloud, it will allow us to realize new and amazing experiences a decade ahead of schedule.”

“OctaneRender 4 is going to be the best of all possible worlds for visuals and interactivity,” remarked Luke Peterson, director of research for PowerVR Ray Tracing. “OTOY is at the forefront of applying new technologies like hardware accelerated ray tracing to show the world what is possible. They are a visionary company inventing the future of media and we couldn’t be happier to be working alongside them.”

Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing technology and OctaneRender 4 will target a broad spectrum of graphics platforms, from cloud based rendering services to ultra-light VR and mixed reality glasses.

The era of hardware accelerated ray tracing will enable artists, VR content creators and game developers to realize their most ambitious creative visions – without compromising interactivity or photorealism.

About OTOY

OTOY Inc. is the definitive cloud graphics company, pioneering technology that is redefining content creation and delivery for media and entertainment organizations around the world. OTOY’s Academy Award®-winning technology is used by leading visual effects studios, artists, animators, designers, architects, and engineers, providing unprecedented creative freedom, new levels of realism, and new economics in content creation and distribution powered by the cloud.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people across the globe. The company’s broad range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes the key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique software IP, infrastructure technologies and system solutions enable its customers to get to market quickly with complete and highly differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who are creating some of the world’s most iconic products. See: www.imgtec.com.