# AMD ray tracing optimization technology

> Live situation record from CLSTR: https://clstr.news/situations/amd-ray-tracing-optimization-technology
> Updated: 2026-09-23T01:54:59.000Z. Sources: 13. Developments: 2.

AMD has introduced a new ray tracing research technique called ‘Tetrahedral Cages’ to optimize the rendering of complex, animated environments. The method aims to reduce the significant memory and computational overhead typically required for updating Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) structures in large-scale dynamic scenes.

By wrapping high-density geometry in a smaller, deformable tetrahedral cage, the system animates the simplified cage rather than the entire high-detail mesh. This allows rays to be transformed back to a static reference space for intersection calculations. In technical demonstrations involving approximately 500 million ray-traced triangles, the technology reduced memory requirements from as much as 80 GB to approximately 1.7 GB and lowered BVH update times from over 300 ms to roughly 3.3 ms.

The technology is currently in the research and development stage and is designed to be compatible with Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR).

## Timeline

### 2026-09-23: AMD unveils Tetrahedral Cages technology to optimize ray tracing

AMD introduced ‘Tetrahedral Cages’ technology, which reduces BVH memory usage by 97.9% and accelerates updates by 90x in large-scale dynamic ray tracing scenes.

2 sources. https://clstr.news/cluster/amd-unveils-tetrahedral-cages-technology-to-optimize-ray-tracing

### 2026-09-20: AMD unveils new ray tracing technique to reduce VRAM usage

AMD has unveiled a new ray tracing technique using tetrahedral cages to reduce BVH memory usage from 80 GB to 1.7 GB while rendering 500 million animated triangles.

11 sources. https://clstr.news/cluster/amd-radeon-rx-9050-and-rx-9070-xt-hardware-updates

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Cite as: AMD ray tracing optimization technology. CLSTR, https://clstr.news/situations/amd-ray-tracing-optimization-technology