About Embree 2.0..

[rtfss1gmail_com]

Have seen Intel Siggraph presentation slides about Embree 2.0 MIC support and have some questions suggestions:
1 Can we expect some beta be avaiable at MIC products release launch?.
2 I know is more easier said than done but it makes sense to evolve Embree to a more like Optix library?
 where we have:
*fast dynamic and HQ structure acceleration builders tuned for MIC (similar HLBVH 2 in NV Optix parlance): would be good to compare timings of fast NV builders vs fast ones on MIC..
*even faster accel structure updates/refinement (coming Optix 3.0)
*makes sense to expose some raytrace shading language? (similar to Caustics OpenRL or NV Optix one) perhaps using some OSL (open shading language)..
etc..

[Manfred_Ernst__Intel]

1) Embree 2.0 beta makes rapid progress, but no release date can be annouced at the current point.
2a) We are working on fast acceleration structure builders on MIC.
2b) We have not looked into updating/refingine acceleration structures in Embree. We may want to do this as interaticve application scenarios become a more common use case for ray tracing.
2c) We consider a shading language to be part of the rendering layer. Given that Embree's focus is on the underlying accleration structure builders and traversal kernels, we have no plans to add a shading language to Embree anytime soon.