Apparatus and method for a hierarchical beam tracer

    公开(公告)号:US11315304B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-04-26

    申请号:US17003011

    申请日:2020-08-26

    Abstract: Apparatus and method for a hierarchical beam tracer. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a beam generator to generate beam data associated with a beam projected into a graphics scene; a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) generator to generate BVH data comprising a plurality of hierarchically arranged BVH nodes; a hierarchical beam-based traversal unit to determine whether the beam intersects a current BVH node and, if so, to responsively subdivide the beam into N child beams to test against the current BVH node and/or to traverse further down the BVH hierarchy to select a new BVH node, wherein the hierarchical beam-based traversal unit is to iteratively subdivide successive intersecting child beams and/or to continue to traverse down the BVH hierarchy until a leaf node is reached with which at least one final child beam is determined to intersect; the hierarchical beam-based traversal unit to generate a plurality of rays within the final child beam; and intersection hardware logic to perform intersection testing for any rays intersecting the leaf node, the intersection testing to determine intersections between the rays intersecting the leaf node and primitives bounded by the leaf node.

    Apparatus and method for efficiently storing ray traversal data

    公开(公告)号:US11189076B2

    公开(公告)日:2021-11-30

    申请号:US16929671

    申请日:2020-07-15

    Abstract: Apparatus and method for preventing re-traversal of a prior path on a restart. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a ray generator to generate a plurality of rays in a graphics scene; a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) generator to construct a BVH comprising a plurality of hierarchically arranged nodes, wherein the BVH comprises a specified number of child nodes at a current BVH level beneath a parent node in the hierarchy; circuitry to traverse one or more of the rays through the BVH to form a current traversal path and intersect the one or more rays with primitives contained within the nodes, wherein the circuitry is to process entries from the top of a first data structure comprising entries each associated with a child node at the current BVH level, the entries being ordered from top to bottom based on a sorted distance of each respective child node.

    Temporal data structures in a ray tracing architecture

    公开(公告)号:US11776196B2

    公开(公告)日:2023-10-03

    申请号:US17868610

    申请日:2022-07-19

    CPC classification number: G06T15/005 G06T1/20 G06T15/06 G06T17/00 G09G2360/00

    Abstract: A graphics processing apparatus comprising bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) construction circuitry to perform a spatial analysis and temporal analysis related to a plurality of input primitives and responsively generate a BVH comprising spatial, temporal, and spatial-temporal components that are hierarchically arranged, wherein the spatial components include a plurality of spatial nodes with children, the spatial nodes bounding the children using spatial bounds, and the temporal components comprise temporal nodes with children, the temporal nodes bounding their children using temporal bounds and the spatial-temporal components comprise spatial-temporal nodes with children, the spatial-temporal nodes bounding their children using spatial and temporal bounds; and ray traversal/intersection circuitry to traverse a ray or a set of rays through the BVH in accordance with the spatial and temporal components.

    Ray tracing apparatus and method for memory access and register operations

    公开(公告)号:US11367243B2

    公开(公告)日:2022-06-21

    申请号:US17108774

    申请日:2020-12-01

    Abstract: An apparatus and method for performing BVH compression and decompression concurrently with stores and loads, respectively. For example, one embodiment comprises: bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) construction circuitry to build a BVH based on a set of input primitives, the BVH comprising a plurality of uncompressed coordinates; traversal/intersection circuitry to traverse one or more rays through the BVH and determine intersections with the set of input primitives using the uncompressed coordinates; store with compression circuitry to compress the BVH including the plurality of uncompressed coordinates to generate a compressed BVH with compressed coordinates and to store the compressed BVH to a memory subsystem; and load with decompression circuitry to decompress the BVH including the compressed coordinates to generate a decompressed BVH with the uncompressed coordinates and to load the decompressed BVH with uncompressed coordinates to a cache and/or a set of registers accessible by the traversal/intersection circuitry.

    Apparatus and method for efficiently merging bounding volume hierarchy data

    公开(公告)号:US11189074B2

    公开(公告)日:2021-11-30

    申请号:US16890254

    申请日:2020-06-02

    Abstract: An apparatus and method for efficiently reconstructing a BVH. For example, one embodiment of a method comprises: constructing an object bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) for each object in a scene, each object BVH including a root node and one or more child nodes based on primitives included in each object; constructing a top-level BVH using the root nodes of the individual object BVHs; performing an analysis of the top-level BVH to determine whether the top-level BVH comprises a sufficiently efficient arrangement of nodes within its hierarchy; and reconstructing at least a portion of the top-level BVH if a more efficient arrangement of nodes exists, wherein reconstructing comprises rebuilding the portion of the top-level BVH until one or more stopping criteria have been met, the stopping criteria defined to prevent an entire rebuilding of the top-level BVH.

Patent Agency Ranking