Device for the photorealistic representation of dynamic, complex, three-dimensional scenes by means of ray tracing

摘要

The invention relates to a device for the photorealistic representation of dynamic, complex, three-dimensional scenes by means of ray-tracing. Said device comprises at least one programmable ray-tracing processor in which are implemented: special traversing instructions and/or vector arithmetic instructions and/or instructions for establishing ray-tracing acceleration structures and/or at least one decision unit (mailbox), which prevents objects or triangles that have already been intersected by a ray cast during ray tracing from being intersected again by the ray. The inventive device is organized such as to allow a plurality of threads to be processed in parallel and to allow a plurality of threads to be automatically processed synchronously, the device being provided with an n-level cache hierarchy and/or virtual memory management and/or a direct link to the main memory.