Apparatus and method for quantized convergent direction-based ray sorting

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11783530-B2
Application number	US-202217677109-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 22, 2022
Priority date	Dec 27, 2019
Publication date	Oct 10, 2023
Grant date	Oct 10, 2023

Abstract

Apparatus and method for grouping rays based on quantized ray directions. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: An apparatus comprising: a ray generator to generate a plurality of rays; ray direction evaluation circuitry/logic to generate approximate ray direction data for each of the plurality of rays; ray sorting circuitry/logic to sort the rays into a plurality of ray queues based, at least in part, on the approximate ray direction data.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus comprising:
execution circuitry coupled to non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that stores instructions, which when executed by the execution circuitry, are capable of performing:
generating a plurality of rays;
generating ray direction data to estimate directions for the plurality of rays, wherein generation of the ray direction data comprises performing a ray and bounding box intersection test, and encoding a result of the ray and bounding box intersection test in a plurality of bits to generate the ray direction data; and
sorting the plurality of rays into a plurality of ray groups based on the ray direction data.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein sorting the plurality of rays is based on a direction sort key comprising the plurality of bits.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the direction sort key comprises intersection coordinates determined based on the ray and bounding box intersection test.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 , wherein precision of the intersection coordinates is reduced to fit within a specified size of the direction sort key.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein secondary rays based on the ray and bounding box intersection test are sorted into a same group.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein sorting the plurality of rays is further based on a shader record identifier.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein rays within a ray group of the plurality of ray groups are deemed to converge on a same intersection point.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein rays within a ray group of the plurality of ray groups are stored in a queue.

9. A method comprising:
generating a plurality of rays;
generating ray direction data to estimate directions for the plurality of rays, wherein generation of the ray direction data comprises performing a ray and bounding box intersection test, and encoding a result of the ray and bounding box intersection test in a plurality of bits to generate the ray direction data; and
sorting the plurality of rays into a plurality of ray groups based on the ray direction data.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein secondary rays based on the ray and bounding box intersection test are sorted into a same group.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein sorting the plurality of rays is further based on a shader record identifier.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein rays within a ray group of the plurality of ray groups are stored in a queue.

13. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, are capable of causing the machine to perform:
generating a plurality of rays;
generating ray direction data to estimate directions for the plurality of rays, wherein generation of the ray direction data comprises performing a ray and bounding box intersection test, and encoding a result of the ray and bounding box intersection test in a plurality of bits to generate the ray direction data; and
sorting the plurality of rays into a plurality of ray groups based on the ray direction data.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 13 , wherein sorting the plurality of rays is further based on a shader record identifier.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 13 , wherein rays within a ray group of the plurality of ray groups are stored in a queue.

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Szerszen Karol
• Surti Prasoonkumar
• Liktor Gabor
• Vaidyanathan Karthik
• Woop Sven

Classifications

• G06T15/06 Primary

  Ray-tracing · CPC title

• G06T1/20 Primary

  Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining · CPC title

• G06T15/005

  General purpose rendering architectures · CPC title

• G06T15/08

  Volume rendering · CPC title

• G06T17/10

  Constructive solid geometry [CSG] using solid primitives, e.g. cylinders, cubes · CPC title