> Also, I doubt GPU vendors would add special-purpose hardware like that. They'd much rather just add some new shader instructions to help doing it.
The PowerVR guys added special purpose hardware for doing spatial lookups for raytracing.
The PowerVR guys added special purpose hardware for doing spatial lookups for raytracing.
[1]: https://www.imgtec.com/blog/ray-traced-shadows-vs-cascaded-s...
Shadows are probably one of the places where raytracing makes a lot of sense though. It's one of few shadow rendering techniques that don't blow a ton of precious fillrate, and it shouldn't take too many rays.