Apparatus and method for hierarchical beam tracing and packet compression in a ray tracing system

A method comprising:

• communicatively coupling a first node comprising a first ray tracing engine to a second node comprising a second ray tracing engine;
• performing compression of ray tracing data of the first ray tracing engine using first compression circuitry on the first node to produce a first compressed stream of ray tracing data;
• and
• transmitting the first compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first node to the second node.

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

• communicatively coupling a first node comprising a first ray tracing engine to a second node comprising a second ray tracing engine;
• performing compression of ray tracing data of the first ray tracing engine using first compression circuitry on the first node to produce a first compressed stream of ray tracing data;
• and
• transmitting the first compressed stream of ray tracing data from the first node to the second node.