Macro 64-regions for uniform grids on GPU

    Authors

    E. M. Taranta;S. N. Pattanaik

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Visual Comput.

    Keywords

    Grid; Accelerator; Ray tracing; GPU; TRACING ANIMATED SCENES; TRAVERSAL; Computer Science, Software Engineering

    Abstract

    Uniform grids are a spatial subdivision acceleration structure well suited for ray tracing. They are known for their fast build times and ease of use, but suffer from slow traversals in the presence of empty space. To address this issue, we present macro 64-regions, a new GPU based approach for finding and storing empty volumes in an underlying uniform grid. This allows for fast traversals through regions that do not contain scene geometry. Further, unlike previous solutions to this problem, we do not store a hierarchical structure and therefore the traversal steps are simplified. Because macro 64-regions are dependent on an underlying grid, we also introduce an improvement in the grid construction process. Our method does not rely on sorting as previous methods do, but instead uses atomic operators to manage bookkeeping during the build. Using our proposed methods, we show a substantial improvement in build time, trace time, as well as an improvement in the consistency of rendering times for randomly generated views.

    Journal Title

    Visual Computer

    Volume

    30

    Issue/Number

    6-8

    Publication Date

    1-1-2014

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    615

    Last Page

    624

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000337054700006

    ISSN

    0178-2789

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