Apparatus and method for hierarchical beam tracing and packet compression in a ray tracing system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10977853-B2
Application number	US-202016791719-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 14, 2020
Priority date	Apr 7, 2017
Publication date	Apr 13, 2021
Grant date	Apr 13, 2021

Abstract

An apparatus and method for compressing ray tracing data prior to transmission between nodes. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a first node comprising a first ray tracing engine, the first node communicatively coupled to a second node comprising a second ray tracing engine; first compression circuitry coupled to the first ray tracing engine, the first compression circuitry to perform compression on ray tracing data of the first ray tracing engine to produce a first compressed stream of ray tracing data; and interface circuitry to transmit the first compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first node to the second node.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A first graphics processing apparatus comprising:
compression circuitry to perform lossless compression of at least a first portion of ray tracing data to produce a compressed stream of ray tracing data, wherein the lossless compression comprises data and/or commands which, upon execution by a second graphics processing apparatus, allows the second graphics processing apparatus to reconstruct the ray tracing data; and
interface circuitry to transmit the compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first graphics processing apparatus to the second graphics processing apparatus.

2. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, and wherein a ray packet includes metadata for a plurality of rays sharing a common origin.

3. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the ray packet identifies the common origin.

4. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, wherein a ray packet includes a mask identifying a subset of a plurality of rays sharing common information.

5. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the common information includes one or more of a material identifier, a primitive identifier, a ray origin, a direction, and a normal.

6. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the compression circuitry is to further perform lossy compression of at least a second portion of the ray tracing data.

7. The first graphics processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the first graphics processing apparatus further comprises:
decompression circuitry to perform decompression of a second compressed stream of ray tracing data received from the second graphics processing apparatus.

8. A method comprising:
communicatively coupling a first graphics processing apparatus to a second graphics processing apparatus;
performing lossless compression of at least a first portion of ray tracing data to produce a compressed stream of ray tracing data, wherein the lossless compression comprises data and/or commands which, upon execution by the second graphics processing apparatus, allows the second graphics processing apparatus to reconstruct the ray tracing data; and
transmitting the compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first graphics processing apparatus to the second graphics processing apparatus.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, and wherein a ray packet includes metadata for a plurality of rays sharing a common origin.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the ray packet identifies the common origin.

11. The method of claim 8 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, and wherein a ray packet includes a mask identifying a subset of a plurality of rays sharing common information.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the common information includes one or more of a material identifier, a primitive identifier, a ray origin, a direction, and a normal.

13. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
performing lossy compression of at least a second portion of the ray tracing data.

14. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
perform decompression of a second compressed stream of ray tracing data received from the second graphics processing apparatus.

15. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium include instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of causing the machine to perform:
communicatively coupling a first graphics processing apparatus to a second graphics processing apparatus;
performing lossless compression of at least a first portion of ray tracing data to produce a compressed stream of ray tracing data, wherein the lossless compression comprises data and/or commands which, upon execution by the second graphics processing apparatus, allows the second graphics processing apparatus to reconstruct the ray tracing data; and
transmitting the compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first graphics processing apparatus to the second graphics processing apparatus.

16. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, and wherein a ray packet includes metadata for a plurality of rays sharing a common origin.

17. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 16 , wherein the ray packet identifies the common origin.

18. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein the compressed stream of ray tracing data comprises ray packets, and wherein a ray packet includes a mask identifying a subset of a plurality of rays sharing common information.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18 , wherein the common information includes one or more of a material identifier, a primitive identifier, a ray origin, a direction, and a normal.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein the instructions which when executed by the machine, are further capable of causing the machine to perform comprising:
performing lossy compression of at least a second portion of the ray tracing data.

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Wald Ingo
• Liktor Gabor
• Benthin Carsten
• Brownlee Carson
• Guenther Johannes
• Amstutz Jefferson D

Classifications

• G06T15/04

  Texture mapping · CPC title

• G06T15/06 Primary

  Ray-tracing · CPC title

• G06T9/00

  Image coding (bandwidth or redundancy reduction for static pictures H04N1/41; coding or decoding of static colour picture signals H04N1/64; methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals H04N19/00) · CPC title

• G06T15/80

  Shading · CPC title

• G06T15/005

  General purpose rendering architectures · CPC title