Patent ID: 8847959

Claim:
A ray traversal digital circuit comprising: input data bus lines to receive: a block bitmap representative of a grid that represents a portion of a scene, the block bitmap comprising a plurality of bits corresponding to cells that comprise the grid, the block bitmap indicating whether or not the corresponding cells contain at least a portion of a primitive object contained in the scene; and partitioning information representative of partitioning planes that define the cells in the grid; a plurality of arithmetic circuits operable to perform ray traversal of an input ray through the grid; a plurality of selectors operable to selectively provide data from the input data bus lines to the arithmetic circuits; <<CR>> a plurality of data lines selectively connectable among the arithmetic circuits by the plurality of selectors, each data line corresponding to only one of the partitioning planes, each data line providing data pertaining only to the partitioning plane that corresponds to said each data line, each arithmetic circuit operative to process data received on data lines connected to it substantially simultaneously to generate data used to produce an intersection cell address and an intersection bitmap, the intersection cell address representing a first intersected dirty cell in the grid intersected by the input ray, the intersection bitmap comprising a plurality of bits that correspond to the cells comprising the grid, the intersection bitmap indicating whether or not the corresponding cells are intersected by the input ray; and output data bus lines to output: the intersection cell address; and the intersection bitmap.