UL's Futuremark announces iGPU, ray tracing benchmark plans

Underwriters Laboratories computing benchmark division Futuremark, formerly known as MadOnion.com, has announced plans ot add a pair of new benchmarks to its popular 3DMark suite: Night Raid, targeting integrated graphics processors (iGPUs), and a ray tracing benchmark targeting Microsoft's DirectX Ray Tracing API.

Following its acquisition by certification specialist Underwriters Laboratories back in 2014, Futuremark continued its long history of developing system- and gaming-focused benchmarks: While it retired 3DMark for Windows RT, browser benchmark PEacekeeper, 3DMark Vantage, and PCMark Vantage, the company has added virtual reality benchmarking, stress tests, and benchmarks targeting the DirectX12 and Vulkan application programming interfaces (APIs).

Now, the company has confirmed it is looking to launch a pair of new benchmarks targeting very different ends of the spectrum: One for low-power integrated graphics processors (iGPUs) and one for the high-end hardware capable of making use of Microsoft's DirectX Ray Tracing API, both of which will be part of the company's 3DMark benchmarking suite.

Night Raid, the name given to the company's planned iGPU benchmark, is described by Futuremark as 'an ideal test for laptops, notebooks, tablets, and other mobile computing devices,' while also supporting Windows 10 on Arm hardware. While the company hasn't tied itself down to a firm release date, it has promised to have the software in users' hands by early October.

The ray tracing benchmark, by contrast, is somewhat further away: As well as lacking a formal title, the benchmark is scheduled for the vague fourth quarter of the year. Once launched, the benchmark will combine real-time ray tracing with traditional rendering techniques using the DirectX Ray Tracing API, and for those concerned it may be something focused purely on Nvidia's new Turing architecture and its RT ray tracing acceleration cores the company has claimed to be working with both Nvidia and its rival AMD along with Microsoft as the creator of the DirectX API suite.

More information on the benchmarks, including a demo video for the ray tracing bechmark, can be found on the official announcement.