Nvidia Geforce 3000 is said to have auxiliary processor for ray tracing

With the Geforce RTX 2000 series and Turing architecture, Nvidia invested heavily in that ray tracing is a central part of how graphics are developed in the future. Part of this investment is that the architecture is equipped with relatively complex RT cores that occupy a considerable amount of transistors and surface in the graphics circuit, which means that there is less space left over for transistors and cores that do not touch ray tracing.

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According to a new theory from the Youtube channel Coreteks, Nvidia’s solution to the dilemma will be to equip the Geforce 3000 “Ampere” with an auxiliary processor whose only task is to perform calculations regarding ray tracing. The theory is based on the leaked radiator design, which shows two fans mounted on each side of the graphics card. This is interpreted as Nvidia applying a double-sided printed circuit board (PCB), where the back of the card houses the new auxiliary processor.

The purpose of the auxiliary processor should be to relieve the main graphics circuit from ray tracingcalculations, which enables higher RT performance even in the simpler models of the Geforce RTX 3000 series. By using a specialized processor for this very purpose, Nvidia will be able to equip the main graphics circuit with more computing devices in a way that would not be possible if ray tracingcapacity would be increased by additional, or more complex, RT cores.

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Applying an auxiliary processor would not be entirely new to Nvidia. In addition to acquiring the company Ageia and the technology Physx, which manufactured dedicated auxiliary processors for physics calculations, the company also patented an interface for collaboration between streaming processors and an accelerating auxiliary processor in 2018.

At present, this is only about speculation based on the cooling solution and an existing patent. Whether Nvidia will introduce an auxiliary processor in the Geforce RTX 3000 “Ampere” series remains to be seen when the graphics cards will be launched sometime in the autumn of 2020.