NVIDIA Brings RTX and DLSS to Arm Platform

[btarunr]

NVIDIA at GDC dropped a major hint at where it wants to take PC gaming post the Arm acquisition. The company is demonstrating its RTX real-time raytracing technology, and the DLSS performance enhancement, on an Arm processor by MediaTek. To the PC, this means NVIDIA is laying the foundations of gaming in the post-x86 world where it holds Arm IP; foundations that were dug up by Apple and its mighty M1 chip, based on Arm CPU technology.

Making this unequivocal, was MediaTek. "RTX is the most groundbreaking technology to come to PC gaming in the last two decades," said PC Tseng, general manager of MediaTek's Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit."MediaTek and NVIDIA are laying the foundation for a new category of Arm-based high-performance PCs." The Taiwan-based Arm SoC major has developed a new Arm-based PC processor called Kompanio 1200, which it hopes will power PC platforms much like the Apple M1 or the Qualcomm Compute Platforms.



NVIDIA is preparing to put out two demos of RTX and DLSS on Arm. The first one is "Wolfenstein Young Blood" on Arm-based Linux, complete with raytraced reflections and DLSS. The next is an RTX-based tech-demo titled "The Bistro," depicting a raytraced urban scene in France. It's important to note that neither were rendered by a GPU integrated with the MediaTek SoC, but a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU connected to the Kompanio 1200, running a special desktop Linux distro for the Arm machine architecture, which has custom NVIDIA drivers for RTX and DLSS.

What NVIDIA is trying to show here, is that future gaming PCs could do away with x86-based processors completely, as games are increasingly reliant on GPU power, with sufficiently fast Arm CPUs handling serial processing and low-bandwidth I/O stack.

NVIDIA expanded RTX SDKs for Linux to include DLSS, RTX direct illumination, RTX global illumination, AI-accelerated de-noising, and the RTX Memory Utility, a memory-management optimization for raytraced apps.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[dir_d]

We knew this would happen but i am not that impressed, they should be working on how to keep all of their customers using this sort of tech and not just the RTX line. I bet we see FSR on Arm based products soon along with Apple M1 as well because of this.

 

[Ferrum Master]

MediaTek and NVIDIA are laying the foundation for a new category of Arm-based high-performance PCs.

@TheLostSwede

It feels almost like on drugs reading those things in one sentence.

 

[Auer]

We knew this would happen but i am not that impressed, they should be working on how to keep all of their customers using this sort of tech and not just the RTX line. I bet we see FSR on Arm based products soon along with Apple M1 as well because of this.

I dont mind this at all if the end result is more options for the end user.
Nvidia keeps pushing things and forces the competition to innovate too, we all win.

 

[dir_d]

I dont mind this at all if the end result is more options for the end user.
Nvidia keeps pushing things and forces the competition to innovate too, we all win.

Ultimately that's true and you are right, I just want them to bring older tech over as well not just the latest and greatest.

 

[Rithsom]

It's crazy how widely supported ray tracing is becoming. In 2018, everyone joked about it and thought that the likes of GTX cards were here to stay.

Fast forward to now: it is available in many more games, it is less resource-intensive thanks to upscaling tech, AMD has adopted it, and it is becoming available on platforms besides Windows/x86.

 

[TechLurker]

Going to be interesting having Samsung working with RDNA to counter this on some level, esp. in the mobile/ultra-portable space, not to mention AMD still having its own ARM license and project that they could reboot to include RDNA to counter with as well (a GPU ARMs race if you will).

With AMD having locked in most of the console market and steadily penetrating the PC market, the mobile and non-x86 market is the last major stronghold they need to break into. It'd be great if they can make RDNA as easy to plug into ARM designs as Nvidia is doing. The competition would be great. Moreso since Intel is coming into play as well, and they'd likely want to keep x86 semi-relevant in an attempt to counter ARM, or at least get their own GPUs as easily integrated.

 

[chodaboy19]

It's crazy how widely supported ray tracing is becoming. In 2018, everyone joked about it and thought that the likes of GTX cards were here to stay.

Fast forward to now: it is available in many more games, it is less resource-intensive thanks to upscaling tech, AMD has adopted it, and it is becoming available on platforms besides Windows/x86.

I agree! Better quality graphics in any platform is welcomed.

 

[ZoneDymo]

It's crazy how widely supported ray tracing is becoming. In 2018, everyone joked about it and thought that the likes of GTX cards were here to stay.

Fast forward to now: it is available in many more games, it is less resource-intensive thanks to upscaling tech, AMD has adopted it, and it is becoming available on platforms besides Windows/x86.

Not really, everyone jokes (rightly so) at people paying big for RTX2000 series gpu who were all caught in the ray tracing hype (as Nvidia intended) instead of using their brain and buying an RT capable card when RT is actually....ya know...a thing.

Considering how heavy it is (with how hard DLSS gets pushed) I would still not opt into it for RT, atleast wait another generation.

 

[z1n0x]

This read like post Steam Deck damage control. I see Nvidia continue to call Raytracing RTX. A bunch of PR, meh.

 

[Rithsom]

Not really, everyone jokes (rightly so) at people paying big for RTX2000 series gpu who were all caught in the ray tracing hype (as Nvidia intended) instead of using their brain and buying an RT capable card when RT is actually....ya know...a thing.

Considering how heavy it is (with how hard DLSS gets pushed) I would still not opt into it for RT, atleast wait another generation.

Oh, I agree that the hate was somewhat deserved back then. However, those who insisted that rasterization and the GTX cards would continue to be the way of things were sorely mistaken. These days, many popular games with ray tracing are out there. On top of that, RT is supported on AMD cards and consoles. The initial adoption issues with RT have been addressed well in only a couple of years, don't you agree?

 

[Deleted member 185088]

Oh, I agree that the hate was somewhat deserved back then. However, those who insisted that rasterization and the GTX cards would continue to be the way of things were sorely mistaken. These days, many popular games with ray tracing are out there. On top of that, RT is supported on AMD cards and consoles. The initial adoption issues with RT have been addressed well in only a couple of years, don't you agree?

You are not forced to use ray tracing, plus it still is very heavy unless you use something like a 3080. So no, rasterisation is still here and we far away from fully Path traced games.

 

[Rithsom]

You are not forced to use ray tracing, plus it still is very heavy unless you use something like a 3080. So no, rasterisation is still here and we far away from fully Path traced games.

Well, of course rasterization is still mostly here now, but don't you see a future where it is largely phased out?

Maybe you folks need to try RT for yourselves. It really is stunning in some scenarios.

 

[Chaython]

We knew this would happen but i am not that impressed, they should be working on how to keep all of their customers using this sort of tech and not just the RTX line. I bet we see FSR on Arm based products soon along with Apple M1 as well because of this.

FSR is open source, so of course you will see it everywhere. It's just a basic sharpening filter. If it wasn't only on RTX it would break their narrative that it uses the AI cores of their newest GPUs.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's crazy how widely supported ray tracing is becoming. In 2018, everyone joked about it and thought that the likes of GTX cards were here to stay.

Fast forward to now: it is available in many more games, it is less resource-intensive thanks to upscaling tech, AMD has adopted it, and it is becoming available on platforms besides Windows/x86.

You act like it's as widespread as DX9 now. It's still a niche market and only needed two generations of rediculously expensive GPUs before it got a bit of traction, still tanks your framerate, all for an extra shadow from a light or a tree reflection. Amazing.

RT is hardly the next H+T.

 

[Rithsom]

You act like it's as widespread as DX9 now. It's still a niche market and only needed two generations of rediculously expensive GPUs before it got a bit of traction, still tanks your framerate, all for an extra shadow from a light or a tree reflection. Amazing.

RT is hardly the next H+T.

Ugh... I'm not saying that RT is perfect. But it's heck of a lot better than it was at the launch of the RTX 2000 series, and it has a future, unlike rasterization.

Read my reply above...

 

[john_]

What NVIDIA is trying to show here, is that future gaming PCs could do away with x86-based processors completely,

Yeap. I was waiting for something like this from the day Nvidia announced it's first Tegra SOC. Nvidia really wants to take revenge from Intel for throwing them out of the chipset business and not giving them an X86 license. Intel probably also expected that, that's why they will need the fastest gaming GPU they can produce in the next 5-10 years. Or the Intel X86 platform could end up without top gaming GPUs (AMD could limit Radeons on it's Ryzen platform if Nvidia goes ARM and Intel does not manage to create top GPUs for gaming).

 

[Colddecked]

Switch U tech demos?

 

[ZoneDymo]

Oh, I agree that the hate was somewhat deserved back then. However, those who insisted that rasterization and the GTX cards would continue to be the way of things were sorely mistaken. These days, many popular games with ray tracing are out there. On top of that, RT is supported on AMD cards and consoles. The initial adoption issues with RT have been addressed well in only a couple of years, don't you agree?

I mean sure but I also never saw any comment anywhere saying that tbh.

RT has always been the golden ticket and we have had many companies claiming the cracked it to do it in real time (infact one such company was bought by Nvidia years back), I have never seen anyone denying that.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Nvidia is clearly very confident they'll get to buy ARM...

 

[mechtech]

I agree! Better quality graphics in any platform is welcomed.

Crazy awesome graphics doesn't necessarily mean a good game.

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[Chrispy_]

I just played through the LEGO Builder's Journey with RTX on my 2070S at 1440p.
It's absolutely staggering how abysmal the performance hit is for visuals that are very subtly better than the non-raytraced version.

RTX may be the future for marketing goons, but in the real world RTX isn't even remotely viable without DLSS cranked up and for visuals as "clean" as that LEGO game, the noisy/grainy image caused by the raytracing really does make the tricks that realtime raytracing uses so obvious that it ruins the immersion. The instant you move the camera the denoiser is visible, all of the ambient occlusion falls apart, the refections lose all clarity in motion.

RTX gives you enough raytracing data for a full resolution at maybe 5fps. Everything else is blurring/dithering/downsampling/temporal-blending. It always looks great in still scenes but in motion the lies ruin the experience. I spent more time looking at the artifacts caused by DLSS and the denoiser than I did enjoying the improved appearance in static scenes. It's just differently wrong to the fake+bake we're used to, at half the framerate.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I just played through the LEGO Builder's Journey with RTX on my 2070S at 1440p.
It's absolutely staggering how abysmal the performance hit is for visuals that are very subtly better than the non-raytraced version.

RTX may be the future for marketing goons, but in the real world RTX isn't even remotely viable without DLSS cranked up and for visuals as "clean" as that LEGO game, the noisy/grainy image caused by the raytracing really does make the tricks that realtime raytracing uses so obvious that it ruins the immersion. The instant you move the camera the denoiser is visible, all of the ambient occlusion falls apart, the refections lose all clarity in motion.

RTX gives you enough raytracing data for a full resolution at maybe 5fps. Everything else is blurring/dithering/downsampling/temporal-blending. It always looks great in still scenes but in motion the lies ruin the experience. I spent more time looking at the artifacts caused by DLSS and the denoiser than I did enjoying the improved appearance in static scenes. It's just differently wrong to the fake+bake we're used to, at half the framerate.

Keep in mind that you have first generation hardware. Give it 3-4 years and it might be worth it, but I agree, right now, it doesn't seem all that impressive.

 

[Mussels]

We knew this was coming, i bet FSR made Nvidia want to rush this out faster and be 'first'


Consoles and portable systems are about to enter a rush period of upscaling technologies to boost framerates

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Seems like a great way to do a test for a future Switch iteration coming years from now.