Ray tracing on programmable graphics hardware
Ray tracing on programmable graphics hardware
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DOI：
10.1145/566570.566640
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发表时间：
2002-07-01
影响因子：
6.2
通讯作者：
Hanrahan, P
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Purcell, TJ;Buck, I;Hanrahan, P
最近，图形硬件领域出现了一项突破：固定函数流水线已被可编程顶点和片段处理器所取代。在不久的将来，图形流水线很可能演变为一个通用的可编程流处理器，其功能不仅仅是简单的前馈三角形渲染。在本文中，我们评估了图形流水线的可编程性趋势，并解释了如何将光线跟踪映射到图形硬件上。使用我们的模拟器，我们分析了光线投射在下一代可编程图形硬件上的实现性能。此外，我们还比较了使用多通道实现的非分支可编程硬件和支持分支的体系结构之间的性能差异。我们还展示了这种方法如何适用于其他光线跟踪算法，如白色光线跟踪、路径跟踪和混合渲染算法。最后，我们演示了图形硬件上的光线跟踪可以被证明比基于CPU的实现更快，并且与传统的硬件加速的前馈三角形绘制相比具有竞争力。
Recently a breakthrough has Occurred in graphics hardware: fixed function pipelines have been replaced with programmable vertex and fragment processors. In the near future, the graphics pipeline is likely to evolve into a general programmable stream processor capable of more than simply feed-forward triangle rendering.In this paper, we evaluate these trends in programmability of the graphics pipeline and explain how ray tracing can be mapped to graphics hardware. Using our simulator, we analyze the performance of a ray casting implementation on next generation programmable graphics hardware. In addition, we compare the performance difference between non-branching programmable hardware using a multipass implementation and an architecture that supports branching. We also show how this approach is applicable to other ray tracing algorithms such as Whitted ray tracing, path tracing, and hybrid rendering algorithms. Finally, we demonstrate that ray tracing on graphics hardware could prove to be faster than CPU based implementations as well as competitive with traditional hardware accelerated feed-forward triangle rendering.