公开(公告)号：US12159342B2

公开(公告)日：2024-12-03

申请号：US17749951

申请日：2022-05-20

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/50 ,  G06T3/4007 ,  G06T9/00 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/10

Abstract: Ray tracing hardware accelerators supporting motion blur and moving/deforming geometry are disclosed. For example, dynamic objects in an acceleration data structure are encoded with temporal and spatial information. The hardware includes circuitry that test ray intersections against moving/deforming geometry by applying such temporal and spatial information. Such circuitry accelerates the visibility sampling of moving geometry, including rigid body motion and object deformation, and its associated moving bounding volumes to a performance similar to that of the visibility sampling of static geometry.

公开(公告)号：US20230298258A1

公开(公告)日：2023-09-21

申请号：US18198949

申请日：2023-05-18

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

CPC classification number: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/005

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：US20220230380A1

公开(公告)日：2022-07-21

申请号：US17716599

申请日：2022-04-08

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：US11373358B2

公开(公告)日：2022-06-28

申请号：US16901847

申请日：2020-06-15

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06F9/50 ,  G06T3/40 ,  G06T9/00 ,  G06T17/10

Abstract: Ray tracing hardware accelerators supporting motion blur and moving/deforming geometry are disclosed. For example, dynamic objects in an acceleration data structure are encoded with temporal and spatial information. The hardware includes circuitry that test ray intersections against moving/deforming geometry by applying such temporal and spatial information. Such circuitry accelerates the visibility sampling of moving geometry, including rigid body motion and object deformation, and its associated moving bounding volumes to a performance similar to that of the visibility sampling of static geometry.

公开(公告)号：US11295508B2

公开(公告)日：2022-04-05

申请号：US16897764

申请日：2020-06-10

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

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

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：US20220058856A1

公开(公告)日：2022-02-24

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

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：US20210090319A1

公开(公告)日：2021-03-25

申请号：US17111844

申请日：2020-12-04

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：US10740952B2

公开(公告)日：2020-08-11

申请号：US16101196

申请日：2018-08-10

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Samuli Laine ,  Tero Karras ,  Greg Muthler ,  William Parsons Newhall, Jr. ,  Ronald Charles Babich ,  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：US20200051314A1

公开(公告)日：2020-02-13

申请号：US16101148

申请日：2018-08-10

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 ,  G06T17/00 ,  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：US12190435B2

公开(公告)日：2025-01-07

申请号：US18483762

申请日：2023-10-10

Applicant: NVIDIA Corporation

Inventor： Gregory Muthler ,  John Burgess

IPC: G06T15/06 ,  G06F9/30 ,  G06F9/50 ,  G06T15/08 ,  G06T17/00

Abstract: Enhanced techniques applicable to a ray tracing hardware accelerator for traversing a hierarchical acceleration structure are disclosed. For example, traversal efficiency is improved by combining programmable traversals based on ray operations with per-node static configurations that modify traversal behavior. The per-node static configurations enable creators of acceleration data structures to optimize for potential traversals without necessarily requiring detailed information about ray characteristics and ray operations used when traversing the acceleration structure. Moreover, by providing for selective exclusion of certain nodes using per-node static configurations, less memory is needed to express an acceleration structure that includes, for example, different geometric levels of details corresponding to a single object.