As if we hadn't put two and two together, AMD has made it clear that its next-generation RDNA 2 graphics architecture will have full ray tracing support. It felt the need to let us know, despite the fact that we've been told the next-generation Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles will have ray tracing, and both will have AMD RDNA 2 graphics.
What this does confirm, however, is that the way AMD will leverage RDNA 2 ray tracing is through the DirectX12 Ultimate API. Although not confirmed, it's likely that it will also be able to leverage the new Vulkan-driven ray tracing pushed by the Khronos group.
DirectX12 Ultimate supports DirectX Raytracing 1.1, a new version of the DXR technology used in Nvidia's RTX Turing graphics cards with their RT accelerator cores. This introduces new capabilities like inline ray tracing, which combined with other DX12 Ultimate features like variable rate shading, should help cut back on the overhead ray tracing introduces to even powerful, modern GPUs.
