From Autodesk.
And they made a Real time version of it, called I-ray,
Since computers are getting faster, chances are, Nvidia MIGHT be working on a new API like Mantle or DX in the future.
This is all very very loose speculation of course
@4
Is that the best you can come up with?
Are you mentally raytarded?
@Sky
Because they are light simulators, or they use light >RAY< tracing algorithms