Ray tracing apparatus and method for memory access and register operations

A method comprising:

• building a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) based on a set of input primitives, the BVH comprising a plurality of uncompressed coordinates;
• traversing one or more rays through the BVH to determine intersections with the set of input primitives using the uncompressed coordinates;
• compressing at least a portion of the BVH including the plurality of uncompressed coordinates to generate compressed coordinates and to store the compressed coordinates to a memory subsystem;
• and
• load with decompression circuitry to decompress the compressed coordinates to generate a decompressed BVH with decompressed coordinates and to load the decompressed BVH to a cache and/or a set of registers accessible by the traversal/intersection circuitry.

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

• building a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) based on a set of input primitives, the BVH comprising a plurality of uncompressed coordinates;
• traversing one or more rays through the BVH to determine intersections with the set of input primitives using the uncompressed coordinates;
• compressing at least a portion of the BVH including the plurality of uncompressed coordinates to generate compressed coordinates and to store the compressed coordinates to a memory subsystem;
• and
• load with decompression circuitry to decompress the compressed coordinates to generate a decompressed BVH with decompressed coordinates and to load the decompressed BVH to a cache and/or a set of registers accessible by the traversal/intersection circuitry.