US 12,347,019 B2
Hardware acceleration for ray tracing primitives that share vertices
Gregory Muthler, Austin, TX (US); John Burgess, Austin, TX (US); and Ian Chi Yan Kwong, San Jose, CA (US)
Assigned to NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed by NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed on Aug. 10, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/885,207.
Application 17/885,207 is a continuation of application No. 16/901,023, filed on Jun. 15, 2020, granted, now 11,450,057.
Prior Publication US 2022/0383583 A1, Dec. 1, 2022
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06T 15/06 (2011.01); G06F 9/50 (2006.01); G06T 15/08 (2011.01); G06T 17/10 (2006.01); G06T 17/20 (2006.01)
CPC G06T 15/06 (2013.01) [G06F 9/5027 (2013.01); G06T 15/08 (2013.01); G06T 17/10 (2013.01); G06T 17/205 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A ray tracing method comprising:
receiving a value defining a ray;
receiving vertex values defining a first primitive;
receiving vertex values defining a second primitive;
determine, based on the received vertex values defining the first primitive and the vertex values defining the second primitive, whether the first primitive and the second primitive share at least a portion of an edge;
when the first and second primitives are determined to share at least a portion of an edge, using a common vertex based calculation to test both (a) whether the ray intersects the first primitive and (b) whether the ray intersects the second primitive;
when the first and second primitives are determined not to share at least a portion of an edge, using a first vertex based calculation to test whether the ray intersects the first primitive; and
using a second vertex based calculation different from the first vertex based calculation to test whether the ray intersects the second primitive.