A high performance processor for real-time ray-tracing image rendering
M.A.S. Dal Poz, Bruno Barberi Gnecco, Marcelo Knörich Zuffo · 2005
In this paper we propose a programmable hardware architecture for real-time ray tracing, which can be programmed with arbitrary ray-object intersection tests, thus taking advantage of ray tracing's well known flexibility and potential Ray-object intersection calculations require 3D vectors and the usual linear algebra operations. Many of the algorithms also require branching, and looping through data; a Turing-complete processor is necessary to support any type of primitive. This processor is called ROIP (Ray-Object Intersection Processor), designed to calculate ray-object intersections. Today's rasterization Graphic Processing Units still do not allow new triangles to be created by shaders, which is a severe limitation. Another common complaint is the lack of support for higher-order surfaces and other more general objects. With ROIP these problems are solved, as the program running on it has freedom to modify the object data as it pleases and use sophisticated models instead of triangles.