Virtual reality/augmented reality apparatus and method

A graphics processing system comprising:

• a compute cluster comprising:
• global illumination circuitry and/or logic to perform global illumination operations on graphics data in response to execution of a virtual reality application and to responsively generate a stream of samples, wherein the stream of samples is generated based on an expected viewpoint of a user of a virtual reality headset received from a render node;
• a filtering/compression module to perform filtering and/or compression operations on the stream of samples to generate filtered/compressed samples;
• and
• a network interface to communicatively couple the compute cluster to a network, the filtered/compressed samples to be streamed over the network;
• the render node to receive the filtered/compressed samples streamed over the network, the render node comprising:
• decompression circuitry/logic to decompress the filtered/compressed samples to generate decompressed samples;
• a sample buffer to store the decompressed samples;
• sample insertion circuitry/logic to asynchronously insert samples into a light field, wherein the samples are retrieved from the sample buffer based on the expected viewpoint of the user of the virtual reality headset;
• and
• a light field rendering circuit/logic to render the light field using the inserted samples;
• and
• the virtual reality headset having one or more display screens for displaying results output by the light field rendering circuit/logic.