Ray-Box Intersection Circuitry

A method, comprising:

• caching, by a computing system for a ray in a graphics scene, transformed ray direction components corresponding to a transform of the ray based on its dominant direction axis;
• determining, by the computing system, whether a ray intersects a bounding volume of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) data structure, including performing a set of six ray-plane tests for the bounding volume using at most four floating-point multiplication operations by four multiplier circuits, wherein the floating-point multiplication operations operate on:
• the cached transformed ray direction components;
• and
• coordinate information for the bounding volume.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions of a hardware description programming language stored thereon that, when processed by a computing system, program the computing system to generate a computer simulation model, wherein the model represents a hardware circuit that includes:

• ray cache circuitry configured to cache, for a ray in a graphics scene, transformed ray direction components corresponding to a transform of the ray based on its dominant direction axis;
• ray intersect acceleration circuitry configured to determine whether a ray intersects a bounding volume of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) data structure, including:
• ray-plane test circuitry configured to perform a set of six ray-plane tests for the bounding volume using at most four floating-point multiplication operations by four multiplier circuits, wherein the floating-point multiplication operations operate on:
• the transformed ray direction components from the ray cache circuitry;
• and
• coordinate information for the bounding volume.