Cerny, more than anyone who is posting in this thread or anyone who speaks publicly about consoles in the industry, knows well the difference between hardware accelerated ray-tracing, and software ray-tracing. As the architect of the system, he would know himself precisely the amount of area and type of hardware accelerated Ray Tracing they support. So I found the *absence* of clarity on this point, particularly coming from him directly, to be extremely telling. Or to put it bluntly: Cerny chose not to be clear on this point and he would know the answer first hand.
Albert, as much as I respect that you're willing to come here and be enthusiastic about the generation we see unfolding, as someone who clearly has been involved firsthand in a console rollout - I would expect less naïveté on your part (unless you're being disingenuous, which I hope isn't the case.) Yes, of course Mark Cerny knows the intimate details of the next Playstation's architecture. He also knows how the game of incremental reveal is played, and has well-defined limits that have been discussed to death internally about what Sony is and is not willing to disclose at this point.
Not discussing the details of the raytracing solution they've chosen tells us nothing other than they don't believe it's in their interest to reveal those details just yet. Sony has a progressive rollout planned, which is doubtless informed by known events like a keynote presence at E3 by Microsoft. Selective omission of obvious details could be to bait out more information from a competitor. It could be to leave an opportunity for a big reveal at another time. It could be to avoid communicating broader strategy details that are related. It could have been intended to come across in the article but the journalist didn't happen to reflect every detail of the conversation. There are dozens of reasons more likely than trying to hide some weakness. Why would they bring up ray tracing at all if it wasn't a point of strength in their minds? Controlling the conversation is an age old game and essentially Marketing 101.
Frankly, I expect everyone to be disappointed when neither console is capable of using raytracing as a full-scene rendering strategy to replace conventional rasterization. So the trick is going to be showcasing it in a good light (pun not intended originally, but what the heck...)