I say that based on what I've seen and claims I've heard - optix, prman unloading and loading procedurals, a renderer making that claim a long time ago (maybe finalrender?) In any event I don't know if any work particularly well, for the same reasons that Hyperion succeeds of course.
I'm actually more surprised that you would think of sorting and batching of rays as a feat of engineering, I can't imagine it seems all that difficult to you after all your experience.
Presumably this statement based on your having shipped a production renderer that does these things?
> It has actually been done many times in both academics and commercial renderers from at least a decade ago
Academics, yes. Commercial--citation please? The only one I'm aware of is Weta's PantaRay, which is from only ~5 years ago (https://research.nvidia.com/publication/pantaray-fast-ray-tr...).