Pruning Ray Tracing Traversal Operations based on Local Ray Parameter Value

A method, comprising:

• accessing, by a computing system, a traversal stack that stores data for traversal of multiple levels of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) acceleration data structure (ADS) according to a depth-first search to retrieve:
• coordinates of a first bounding region for a child node;
• and
• a local ray parameter value that indicates a point along a ray at which an intersection with a second bounding region for an ancestor node of child node was detected;
• comparing, by the computing system, the local ray parameter value with an end ray parameter value to determine whether to traverse to the child node as part of traversal of the ADS;
• and
• traversing, by the computing system, the ADS based on the determination to generate intersection results for the ray.

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 intersect accelerator circuitry configured to:
• access a traversal stack that stores data for traversal of multiple levels of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) acceleration data structure (ADS) according to a depth-first search to retrieve:
• coordinates of a first bounding region for a child node;
• and
• a local ray parameter value that indicates a point along a ray at which an intersection with a second bounding region for the child node's parent node was detected;
• and
• compare the local ray parameter value with an end ray parameter value to determine whether to traverse to the child node as part of traversal of the ADS.