Apparatus and method for asynchronous ray tracing

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage bank to store entries of a stack, the entries corresponding to one or more nodes of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH);
• traversal circuitry to perform ray traversal and/or intersection operations on one or more rays using the entries of the stack;
• and
• stack circuitry to process the entries of the stack, wherein processing a first stack entry of the stack comprises reading the first stack entry for a node from the stack and updating one or more control bits of the first stack entry.

A method comprising:

• storing entries of a stack in a storage bank, the entries corresponding to one or more nodes of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH);
• performing, by traversal circuitry, ray traversal and/or intersection operations on one or more rays using the entries of the stack;
• and
• processing the entries of the stack, wherein processing a first stack entry of the stack comprises reading the first stack entry for a node from the stack and updating one or more control bits of the first stack entry.

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

• storing entries of a stack in a storage bank, the entries corresponding to one or more nodes of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH);
• performing, by traversal circuitry, ray traversal and/or intersection operations on one or more rays using the entries of the stack;
• and
• processing the entries of the stack, wherein processing a first stack entry of the stack comprises reading the first stack entry for a node from the stack and updating one or more control bits of the first stack entry.