Patent ID: 8203559

Claim:
A machine-implemented method for intersection testing of rays in a scene, comprising: in one or more processors, tracing rays of a first group of rays to a plurality of points in a hierarchical acceleration structure, wherein each of the points of the hierarchical acceleration structure represents an abstraction of a group of primitives of the scene being ray traced; tracing rays of a second group of rays to at least some of the plurality of points in the hierarchical acceleration structure; combining rays of the first group and rays of the second group into respective third ray groups, based on commonality of points of the hierarchical acceleration structure to which rays were traced; and continuing by tracing groups of rays from at least some of the third ray groups further into the hierarchical acceleration structure by concurrently testing rays of one or more of the third ray groups for intersection with a plurality of nodes that are children of the respective point in the hierarchical acceleration structure associated with each tested third ray group.