Patent ID: 8237711

Claim:
A ray tracing system for rendering a 2-D representation of a 3-D scene composed of primitives, the system comprising: a processor configured for maintaining a sample buffer of accumulated data for a plurality of samples of a 2-D representation for a 3-D scene composed of primitives, outputting groups of rays for intersection testing, wherein the rays of at least some of the groups are specified by a shared attribute and individual ray data, wherein each ray is associated with a respective weight, and processing identified intersections between rays and primitives, the processing resulting in the outputting of at least some of the groups of rays, wherein a number of rays in at least some of these groups is determined at least in part by respective weights of rays identified as intersecting; and an intersection testing unit to receive the shared attributes and the individual ray data, and produce a respective origin and a respective direction for each ray, test the rays of the group for intersection with primitives composing the 3-D scene, and provide, to the processor, indications of any identified ray/primitive intersections.