A MICRO-ARCHITECTURE SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RAY TRACING AND COLLISION DETECTION

摘要

The invention hardware system for performing a plurality of calculations on at least one object in an area, said system comprising means for performing ray tracing to determine rays of light that intersect with at least one object to calculate one or more intersections; and means for performing collision detection comprising a collision detection unit adapted to receive inputs from the at least two intersections and the ray used to intersect to check for potential collisions between the objects. The invention allows for full ray tracing, including shading, and collision detection for triangle meshes, both rigid and deformable, to be performed using the same hardware device. The invention provides a single hardware architecture that is suitable for performing both operations, that allows hardware acceleration for both algorithms, while preserving resources by sharing the same logic between both algorithms.