Node encoding for spatially-organized ray tracing acceleration data structure

Abstract

Disclosed techniques relate to acceleration data structure for ray intersection testing. In some embodiments, storage circuitry stores node data for a spatially organized acceleration data structure, including to store the following node information for a given node: origin coordinates for the node and, for a given child node of multiple child nodes, child information that includes: quantized bounding region information for a bounding region corresponding to the child node, where the quantized bounding region information encodes bounding region coordinates as offsets relative to the origin coordinates. Traversal circuitry may traverse multiple nodes of the data structure and determine whether a ray intersects a bounding region indicated by given a node of the data structure based on the node information. Disclosed techniques may provide substantial improvements to performance, data size, and power consumption.