Apparatus and method for asynchronous ray tracing. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) generator to construct a BVH comprising a plurality of hierarchically arranged nodes including a root node, a plurality of internal nodes, and a plurality of leaf nodes comprising primitives, wherein each internal node comprises a child node to either the root node or another internal node and each leaf node comprises a child node to an internal node; a first storage bank to be arranged as a first plurality of entries; a second storage bank to be arranged as a second plurality of entries, wherein each entry of the first plurality of entries and the second plurality of entries is to store a ray to be traversed through the BVH; an allocator circuit to distribute an incoming ray to either the first storage bank or the second storage bank based on a relative numbers of rays currently stored in the first and second storage banks; and traversal circuitry to alternate between selecting a next ray from the first storage bank and the second storage bank, the traversal circuitry to traverse the next ray through the BVH by reading a next BVH node from a top of a BVH node stack and determining whether the next ray intersects the next BVH node.