Patent ID: 9633468
Date: 2017-04-25
CPC Classifications: G06T

Claim:
1. A system for processing rays in 3-D rendering, comprising: a plurality of ray processing units, each ray processing unit comprising logic for testing a ray for intersection with one or more shapes comprising one or more elements of an acceleration structure, or one or more elements of geometry, and a memory configured to store definition data for rays that can be tested for intersection by that ray processing unit; and a memory hierarchy configured to store data defining elements of the acceleration structure and elements of the geometry, and wherein the memory hierarchy is configured to store definition data for rays scheduled for ray testing, the definition data for rays containing both ray origin and ray direction data, wherein each of the ray processing units is configured to receive data from an interconnect and to process the received data to identify, within the respective memory of that ray processing unit, one or more rays to be tested for intersection with a shape, and to output an indication of a result of the testing for intersection of that shape with the one or more identified rays.