Patent ID: 7864174
Filing Date: 2011-01-04
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A method of reducing traffic on a communications network in a ray-tracing image processing system comprising: issuing a first ray into a three dimensional scene; with a first processing element, traversing a spatial index having nodes defining bounded volumes of the three dimensional scene with the first ray until a first leaf node is reached; comparing the first leaf node with a second leaf node stored in a data buffer, wherein the second leaf node was reached when traversing the spatial index with the first processing element for a previously issued ray; if the first leaf node and the second leaf node are the same leaf node, incrementing a counter value indicating a number of rays traversed to the first leaf node; and if the first leaf node and the second leaf node are not the same, sending information stored in the data buffer over the communications network to a second processing element to determine if primitives contained within a bounding volume defined by the second leaf node are intersected by the previously issued ray.