Intel announced recently that their latest Ray Tracing technology will benefit cloud based gaming providers. The technology improves the graphics quality of images often making them look lifelike which makes it suitable for games that are to be streamed to tablets or mobile devices.
Ray tracing is the latest rendering technology that promises to deliver a realistic image. This is done by making sure that various effects such as shadows, refractions and reflection all follow the laws of physics. This kind of realistic detail requires more processing power that is why Intel has come up with an experimental chip called Knights Ferry that can handle this technology.
Knights Ferry is made up of 32 cores with 4 threads per core and with a speed of 1.2 GHz per core. When a rewritten Wolfenstein game was played using this chip people immediately noticed several improvements in the game. Objects which are shiny such as a car would have a reflection on it. If your character stands beside the car you will see your opponent approach you from behind through the reflected image.
The cloud gaming providers that would benefit from this are OnLive and Gaikai which provide their subscribers with a different way to play the games. With ray tracing used, the graphical detail in streamed games will equal or exceed that of console platforms.
On the first half of 2012 Intel plans to commercially release a chip called Knights Corner which will have more than 50 cores in it.
Playing games on cloud is a new field which is expected to grow rapidly as more people own tablets and smartphones. The advantage of playing a streamed game is that you don’t need powerful hardware to do so since everything is being processed by the service provider. Companies such as OnLive provide people with a way to enjoy games through a Windows PC or Mac or even through their TV set as long as they have a broadband Internet connection. As tablets become more popular, people will soon find out that gaming in tablets is a great experience and the best way to play highly graphical games is to have it streamed.
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