Apparatus and method for a hierarchical beam tracer

A method comprising:

• generating beam data associated with a beam projected into a graphics scene;
• generating BVH data comprising a plurality of hierarchically arranged BVH nodes;
• determining whether the beam intersects a current BVH node and, if so, responsively subdividing the beam into N child beams to test against the current BVH node and/or traversing further down the BVH hierarchy to select a new BVH node,
• iteratively subdividing successive intersecting child beams and/or further traversing down the BVH hierarchy until a leaf node is reached with which at least one final child beam is determined to intersect;
• generating a plurality of rays within the final child beam;
• and
• performing intersection testing for any rays intersecting the leaf node, the intersection testing to determine intersections between the rays intersecting the leaf node and primitives bounded by the leaf node.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, causes the machine to perform the operations of:

• generating beam data associated with a beam projected into a graphics scene;
• generating BVH data comprising a plurality of hierarchically arranged BVH nodes;
• determining whether the beam intersects a current BVH node and, if so, responsively subdividing the beam into N child beams to test against the current BVH node and/or traversing further down the BVH hierarchy to select a new BVH node,
• iteratively subdividing successive intersecting child beams and/or further traversing down the BVH hierarchy until a leaf node is reached with which at least one final child beam is determined to intersect;
• generating a plurality of rays within the final child beam;
• and
• performing intersection testing for any rays intersecting the leaf node, the intersection testing to determine intersections between the rays intersecting the leaf node and primitives bounded by the leaf node.