Nvidia Corporation

Mental Images Gmbh

Martin Stich

Steven Parker

Ignacio Llamas

Steve Parker

Konstantin Vostryakov

Shirish C Gadre

Alexander Georg Keller

Steven James Heinrich

Michael Alan Fetterman

Liang Yin

Andreas Dietrich

Leonhard Grunschloss

Heiko Friedrich

Sehera Nawaz

Various embodiments include techniques for managing cache memory in a computing system. The computing system includes a sectored cache memory that provides a mechanism for software applications to directly invalidate data items stored in the cache memory on a sector-by-sector basis, where a sector is smaller than a cache line. When all sectors in a cache line have been invalidated, the cache line is implicitly invalidated, freeing the cache line to be reallocated for other purposes. In cases where the data items to be invalidated can be aligned to sector boundaries, the disclosed techniques effectively use status indicators in the cache tag memory to track which sectors, and corresponding data items, have been invalidated by the software application. Thus, the disclosed techniques thereby enable a low-overhead solution for invalidating individual data items that are smaller than a cache line without additional tracking data structures or consuming additional memory transfer bandwidth.

Cache memory with per-sector cache residency controls

In various examples, shader bindings may be recorded in a shader binding table that includes shader records. Geometry of a 3D scene may be instantiated using object instances, and each may be associated with a respective set of the shader records using a location identifier of the set of shader records in memory. The set of shader records may represent shader bindings for an object instance under various predefined conditions. One or more of these predefined conditions may be implicit in the way the shader records are arranged in memory (e.g., indexed by ray type, by sub-geometry, etc.). For example, a section selector value (e.g., a section index) may be computed to locate and select a shader record based at least in part on a result of a ray tracing query (e.g., what sub-geometry was hit, what ray type was traced, etc.).

Shader binding management in ray tracing

One aspect of the current disclosure provides a method for utilizing a plurality of memories associated with a plurality of devices in a computer system. The method includes: receiving an application-specific data set for executing a ray tracing application employing the devices; determining whether the data set is fully replicable in each memory; when the data set is not fully replicable in any of the memories, determining a maximum amount of the data set that is replicable in each memory while distributing a remaining amount of the data set across the memories; and identifying, based on application-specific information of the ray tracing application, a first subsection of the data set that corresponds to the maximum amount of the data set and a second subsection of the data set that corresponds to the remaining amount of the data set, wherein the first subsection is accessed more frequently than the second subsection.

Application-specific memory scaling in multi-device systems

One aspect of the current disclosure provides a method for utilizing a plurality of memories associated with a plurality of devices in a computer system. The method includes: 1) receiving a data set for executing an application employing the devices; 2) determining whether the data set is larger than a storage capacity of any of the memories; and 3) when the data set is larger than the storage capacity of any of the memories, replicating a portion of the data set across the memories and distributing a remaining portion of the data set across at least some of the memories.

A hierarchical structure for accelerating ray tracing operations in scene rendering includes a plurality of geometry objects, and a single acceleration structure constructed over the collective plurality of geometry objects. Each geometry object includes primitives of a predefined type, whereby primitives within the plurality of geometry objects collectively define a geometry included within a region of the scene which is to be rendered. The single acceleration structure is operable for accelerating ray tracing operations for the primitives included within the plurality of geometry objects, and is constructed over the plurality of the geometry objects without an intervening bounding volume representation of the plurality of primitives included within the geometry objects.

Hierarchical structure for accelerating ray tracing operations in scene rendering

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for constructing a hierarchical acceleration data structure that supports ray tracing of motion blur. In use, scene description data associated with an image to be generated is received. Additionally, a hierarchical acceleration data structure for performing ray tracing on the scene description data is constructed, where the hierarchical acceleration data structure supports ray tracing of motion blur.

System, method, and computer program product for constructing a hierarchical acceleration data structure that supports ray tracing of motion blur

A system and method for constructing a bounding volume hierarchical structure are disclosed. The method includes defining a parent node for the bounding volume hierarchical structure, the parent node including a parent node bounding volume enclosing a plurality of objects. A first cost is computed for performing an object partition of the parent node bounding volume to produce a first plurality of child node bounding volumes, and a second cost is also computed for performing a spatial partitioning of the parent node bounding volume to produce a second plurality of child node bounding volumes. The bounding volume hierarchical structure is constructed employing the second plurality of child node bounding volumes produced from the spatial partitioning of the parent node bounding volume if the second cost is lower than the first cost.

System and method for constructing a bounding volume hierarchical structure

Techniques, systems, arrangements, and computer program products are operable in computer graphics systems to make shadow volumes more general with respect to the meshes that can serve as occluding geometry in such computer graphics systems, as well as for accelerating shadow volume techniques, particularly for large and complex input scenes.

Growing community of inventors

Berlin, Germany

Martin Stich