AT&T Pixel Machines PXM 900 Series http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/pixel_machine/Pixel_Machine_Brochure_1987.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/pixel_machine/Pixel_

AT&T Pixel Machines PXM 900 Series http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/pixel_machine/Pixel_Machine_Brochure_1987.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/pixel_machine/Pixel_Machine_Bro... "The PXM 900 Series uses 32 bit floating-point processors exclusively. So floating-point-intensive algorithms -- like those used for image processing and ray-tracing -- can be implemented directly at the frame buffer level for real-time processing." http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/ray-tracing-gems-book-call-for-participation/ http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/ray-tracing-gems-book-... "As far as “considered unattainable for decades” goes, interactive ray tracing has been attained long ago, just not for (non-trivial) video games or other interactive applications. My first encounter with an interactive ray tracer was AT&T’s Pixel Machine back in 1987. I had put out the Standard Procedural Databases on Usenet the week before SIGGRAPH, and was amazed to see that they had grabbed them and were rendering some in just a few seconds. But the real excitement was a little postage-stamp (well, maybe 6 stamps) sized rendering, where you could interactively use a mouse to control a shiny sphere’s position atop a Mandrill plane texture." The only reason I remember that this hardware existed is that it was mentioned in the book I first learned C programming from.