BVH Geometry Compression With Quantized and Residual Triangle Blocks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing graphics processing technologies face inefficiencies in ray tracing due to the large size of bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs) caused by storing both compressed and uncompressed triangle data, which increases memory footprint and traversal time, and the need for repeated compression/decompression, while traditional triangle filters increase power consumption and performance penalties.
Innovation Solution
A progressive geometry compression scheme is employed, where quantized triangle data is stored in quantized blocks, with separate blocks storing residual precision for higher-precision operations, reducing BVH footprint and traversal-time bandwidth without performance penalties, and deduplication techniques are used to efficiently assign primitives to quantized triangle blocks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If both compressed and uncompressed triangle data are stored in the BVH, then higher precision operations can be performed, but the memory footprint and traversal time increase substantially
Solution Approach 1:
The triangle data is segmented into two separate blocks: a quantized triangle block storing compressed data with lower precision, and a residual block storing the difference data. This segmentation allows the system to use only the necessary precision for each operation, reducing the memory footprint while maintaining the capability for high-precision operations when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The residual data block is nested within the BVH structure alongside the quantized triangle block. The residual block contains the difference between the original and quantized data, allowing reconstruction of full-precision data when required. This nested structure enables progressive precision without duplicating the entire triangle data set.
2Measurement precision
If both compressed and uncompressed triangle data are stored in the BVH, then higher precision operations can be performed, but traversal time increases
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting triangle data into quantized and residual blocks, the system can perform traversal operations using only the compact quantized data for bounding volume tests, avoiding the need to traverse or process the larger residual data during normal traversal, thus reducing traversal time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs partial precision operations during traversal by using only the quantized data for most operations. Full precision is applied only when necessary for final intersection testing, reducing the overall computational time while maintaining accuracy where needed.
3Productivity
If traditional triangle filters are used for ray tracing, then intersection testing can be performed, but power consumption increases and performance penalties occur
Solution Approach 1:
The invention changes the precision parameter of triangle data storage by using quantized data instead of full-precision data in the quantized triangle block. This parameter change reduces memory bandwidth requirements and power consumption during traversal while maintaining the ability to achieve accurate intersection results when needed.
Data Source
AI summary
A graphics processor includes circuitry configured to generate a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) data structure for a graphics scene to be rendered. The BVH includes a leaf node that includes: node data that specifies quantization frame data for quantized primitive children of the leaf node, a quantized primitive block that includes quantized vertex components of the primitive children, and a vertex residual block that includes additional vertex data for the primitive children. The vertex residual block may not include redundant data with the quantized primitive block and the quantized primitive block and vertex residual block may include, for the primitive children, sufficient data to reconstruct an original-precision representation of their vertices. The circuitry may traverse the BVH to perform ray tracing operations during render of the graphics scene, including to perform one or more ray primitive intersect tests based on the quantized primitive block and the vertex residual block.