公开(公告)号：US20250104334A1

公开(公告)日：2025-03-27

申请号：US18971974

申请日：2024-12-06

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Samuli Laine ,  Tero Karras ,  Greg Muthler ,  William Parsons Newhall, JR. ,  Ronald Charles Babich, JR. ,  Ignacio LLamas ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T1/20 ,  G06T15/00

Abstract: A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include opaque and alpha triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to determine primitives intersected by the ray, and return intersection information to a streaming multiprocessor for further processing. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to provide a deterministic result of intersected triangles regardless of the order that the memory subsystem returns triangle range blocks for processing, while opportunistically eliminating alpha intersections that lie further along the length of the ray than closer opaque intersections.

公开(公告)号：US12198256B2

公开(公告)日：2025-01-14

申请号：US18509038

申请日：2023-11-14

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess ,  Ronald Charles Babich, Jr. ,  William Parsons Newhall, Jr.

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/48 ,  G06F9/50 ,  G06T17/10

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for improving the throughput of ray intersection or visibility queries performed by a ray tracing hardware accelerator. Throughput is improved, for example, by releasing allocated resources before ray visibility query results are reported by the hardware accelerator. The allocated resources are released when the ray visibility query results can be stored in a compressed format outside of the allocated resources. When reporting the ray visibility query results, the results are reconstructed based on the results stored in the compressed format. The compressed format storage can be used for ray visibility queries that return no intersections or terminate on any hit ray visibility query. One or more individual components of allocated resources can also be independently deallocated based on the type of data to be returned and/or results of the ray visibility query.

公开(公告)号：US12106423B2

公开(公告)日：2024-10-01

申请号：US17946201

申请日：2022-09-16

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess ,  Magnus Andersson ,  Ian Kwong ,  Edward Biddulph

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/00 ,  G06T15/30

CPC classification number: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/005 ,  G06T15/30 ,  G06T2210/12 ,  G06T2210/21

Abstract: Techniques applicable to a ray tracing hardware accelerator for traversing a hierarchical acceleration structure with reduced false positive ray intersections are disclosed. The reduction of false positives may be based upon one or more of selectively performing a secondary higher precision intersection test for a bounding volume, identifying and culling bounding volumes that degenerate to a point, and parametrically clipping rays that exceed certain configured distance thresholds.

公开(公告)号：US12073504B2

公开(公告)日：2024-08-27

申请号：US18137418

申请日：2023-04-20

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/50 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/00 ,  G06T17/10

CPC classification number: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/5027 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/005 ,  G06T17/10 ,  G06T2210/12

Abstract: A bounding volume is used to approximate the space an object occupies. If a more precise understanding beyond an approximation is required, the object itself is then inspected to determine what space it occupies. Often, a simple volume (such as an axis-aligned box) is used as bounding volume to approximate the space occupied by an object. But objects can be arbitrary, complicated shapes. So a simple volume often does not fit the object very well. That causes a lot of space that is not occupied by the object to be included in the approximation of the space being occupied by the object. Hardware-based techniques are disclosed herein, for example, for efficiently using multiple bounding volumes (such as axis-aligned bounding boxes) to represent, in effect, an arbitrarily shaped bounding volume to better fit the object, and for using such arbitrary bounding volumes to improve performance in applications such as ray tracing.

公开(公告)号：US11663770B2

公开(公告)日：2023-05-30

申请号：US17681168

申请日：2022-02-25

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/10 ,  G06T17/00 ,  G06F9/50

CPC classification number: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/5027 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/005 ,  G06T17/10 ,  G06T2210/12

Abstract: A bounding volume is used to approximate the space an object occupies. If a more precise understanding beyond an approximation is required, the object itself is then inspected to determine what space it occupies. Often, a simple volume (such as an axis-aligned box) is used as bounding volume to approximate the space occupied by an object. But objects can be arbitrary, complicated shapes. So a simple volume often does not fit the object very well. That causes a lot of space that is not occupied by the object to be included in the approximation of the space being occupied by the object. Hardware-based techniques are disclosed herein, for example, for efficiently using multiple bounding volumes (such as axis-aligned bounding boxes) to represent, in effect, an arbitrarily shaped bounding volume to better fit the object, and for using such arbitrary bounding volumes to improve performance in applications such as ray tracing.

公开(公告)号：US11645810B2

公开(公告)日：2023-05-09

申请号：US17520100

申请日：2021-11-05

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Greg Muthler ,  Tero Karras ,  Samuli Laine ,  William Parsons Newhall, Jr. ,  Ronald Charles Babich, Jr. ,  John Burgess ,  Ignacio Llamas

IPC: G06T15/06

CPC classification number: G06T15/06

Abstract: A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include opaque and alpha triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to determine primitives intersected by the ray, and return intersection information to a streaming multiprocessor for further processing. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to omit reporting of one or more primitives the ray is determined to intersect. The omitted primitives include primitives which are provably capable of being omitted without a functional impact on visualizing the virtual scene.

公开(公告)号：US20220392148A1

公开(公告)日：2022-12-08

申请号：US17889545

申请日：2022-08-17

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Greg Muthler ,  Ronald Charles Babich, JR. ,  William Parsons Newhall, JR. ,  Peter Nelson ,  James Robertson ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/38 ,  G06T1/60 ,  G06N5/04 ,  G06T1/20 ,  G06T17/00

Abstract: In a ray tracer, to prevent any long-running query from hanging the graphics processing unit, a traversal coprocessor provides a preemption mechanism that will allow rays to stop processing or time out early. The example non-limiting implementations described herein provide such a preemption mechanism, including a forward progress guarantee, and additional programmable timeout options that can be time or cycle based. Those programmable options provide a means for quality of service timing guarantees for applications such as virtual reality (VR) that have strict timing requirements.

公开(公告)号：US11328472B2

公开(公告)日：2022-05-10

申请号：US17032818

申请日：2020-09-25

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Samuli Laine ,  Tero Karras ,  Timo Aila ,  Robert Ohannessian ,  William Parsons Newhall, Jr. ,  Greg Muthler ,  Ian Kwong ,  Peter Nelson ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/00

Abstract: A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to properly handle numerically challenging computations at or near edges and/or vertices of primitives and/or ensure that a single intersection is reported when a ray intersects a surface formed by primitives at or near edges and/or vertices of the primitives.

公开(公告)号：US11189075B2

公开(公告)日：2021-11-30

申请号：US16893107

申请日：2020-06-04

Applicant: NVIDIA CORPORATION

Inventor： Samuli Laine ,  Timo Aila ,  Tero Karras ,  Gregory Muthler ,  William P. Newhall, Jr. ,  Ronald C. Babich, Jr. ,  Craig Kolb ,  Ignacio Llamas ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/00 ,  G06T17/00

Abstract: Methods and systems are described in some examples for changing the traversal of an acceleration data structure in a highly dynamic query-specific manner, with each query specifying test parameters, a test opcode and a mapping of test results to actions. In an example ray tracing implementation, traversal of a bounding volume hierarchy by a ray is performed with the default behavior of the traversal being changed in accordance with results of a test performed using the test opcode and test parameters specified in the ray data structure and another test parameter specified in a node of the bounding volume hierarchy. In an example implementation a traversal coprocessor is configured to perform the traversal of the bounding volume hierarchy.

公开(公告)号：US11157414B2

公开(公告)日：2021-10-26

申请号：US16101109

申请日：2018-08-10

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Greg Muthler ,  Timo Aila ,  Tero Karras ,  Samuli Laine ,  William Parsons Newhall, Jr. ,  Ronald Charles Babich, Jr. ,  John Burgess ,  Ignacio Llamas

IPC: G06F12/00 ,  G06F12/0875 ,  G06T15/06 ,  G06F16/901

Abstract: In a ray tracer, a cache for streaming workloads groups ray requests for coherent successive bounding volume hierarchy traversal operations by sending common data down an attached data path to all ray requests in the group at the same time or about the same time. Grouping the requests provides good performance with a smaller number of cache lines.