Systems and methods for a ray tracing shader api

A system for use in ray tracing, comprising:

• a shader execution environment comprising a computing resource configured with computer executable instructions to provide an interface for shaders during their execution, the interface comprising a ray emission call for use by shaders to specify respective origins and directions for one or more rays to be intersected tested, and one or more data elements additional to the origin and direction information;
• and
• a memory resource interfaced with the shader execution environment to receive and store the origin and direction information and the one or more data elements, wherein
• the shader execution environment is interfaced with an output of an intersection testing resource, which provides indications of intersection testing results of rays that have completed intersection testing, and is configured to identify a respective shader module for handling the shading of each ray intersection indication.

A query-resolver system, comprising:

• a memory storing a dataset comprising a plurality of elements, each of the elements defined by values for up to n variables, n>=3;
• a system interface exposing a query emit interface for accepting a query defined by parameters and a solution contribute interface for accepting, from executing code modules, results to be written to a buffer;
• and
• a processor configured with program code
• for accessing the memory to resolve the query by locating one or more of the elements that meet parameters defined by the query, and upon locating at least one element meeting the parameters,
• for executing one or more executable code modules selected based on one or more of data provided with the query and data associated with that element,
• and to use the system interface for accepting, through the query emit interface, from one or more of the executing code modules, one or more of a further query to be resolved, and through the solution contribute interface, a result to be written to the buffer.

Tangible computer readable media, storing computer readable instructions and data comprising:

• a plurality of code modules;
• computer executable code for implementing a method for selecting code modules to be executed, and providing inputs for their execution, the method comprising:
• querying, with queries, a database comprising a plurality of entries,
• each of the entries specified by respective values for a plurality of parameters, each entry associated with at least one of the code modules, and
• each query comprising a specification that is resolvable into respective ranges of the values of each of the parameters that meet that specification, and additional to the query specification, at least one additional data item to be received as input by one or more to-be-identified code modules;
• resolving each query to one or more entries of the database that meet that query's specification;
• identifying, for that query, one or more code modules associated with those one or more entries;
• and
• providing, from that query, the at least one additional data item as input to those one or more code modules.