US 2011/0032257 A1 · DYNAMIC RAY POPULATION CONTROL

Abstract

Aspects can be for ray tracing of 3-D scenes, and include dynamically controlling a population of rays being stored in a memory, to keep the population within a target, a memory footprint or other resource usage specification. An example includes controlling the population by examining indicia associated with rays returning from intersection testing, to be shaded, the indicia correlated with behavior of shaders to be run for those rays, such that population control selects, or reorders rays for shading, to prioritize shading of rays whose shaders are expected to produce fewer rays. The indicia can include a respective weight for each ray. In an example, analyzer modules examine hints associated with shaders bound to intersected primitives. Population control aspects can influence ray diversity in memory, including encouraging a varying diversity pattern as rendering of a given scene or frame progresses, based on system resource indicia, rendering metrics and so on.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system for rendering with ray tracing, comprising:

an intersection testing resource configured for intersection testing rays with primitives composing a 3-D scene, and for outputting indications of identified intersections comprising ray identification information and information about the closest primitive intersected by the identified ray, wherein each primitive intersected is associated with a shader comprising computer executable code, each shader capable, during execution, of emitting new rays to be intersection tested;
a shading computing resource to select, from shaders identifiable using the outputted indications, shaders to be executed;
and
a memory, for storing data defining rays, operatively coupled with the shading computing resource,
wherein the shading computing resource is configured for executing in a ray population control mode in which the selecting is based on a memory usage metric and on heuristics about amounts of new ray data that would be generated by the shaders associated with the indications.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Dynamic ray population control

Life of this patent

Dynamic ray population control

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20