US 11,756,256 B2
Dedicated ray memory for ray tracing in graphics systems
John W. Howson, St. Albans (GB); Steven J. Clohset, San Francisco, CA (US); and Ali Rabbani, Watford (GB)
Assigned to Imagination Technologies Limited, Kings Langley (GB)
Filed by Imagination Technologies Limited, Kings Langley (GB)
Filed on Mar. 17, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/697,153.
Application 17/697,153 is a continuation of application No. 16/411,628, filed on May 14, 2019, granted, now 11,315,302.
Application 16/411,628 is a continuation of application No. 15/138,868, filed on Apr. 26, 2016, granted, now 10,332,303, issued on Jun. 25, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0207814 A1, Jun. 30, 2022
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06T 15/06 (2011.01); G06T 1/60 (2006.01); G06T 1/20 (2006.01)
CPC G06T 15/06 (2013.01) [G06T 1/20 (2013.01); G06T 1/60 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A processing system operable to perform ray tracing operations, the processing system comprising:
control logic configured to manage allocation of ray data for rays to either a first memory or a second memory, such that:
for each of the rays, ray data for the ray is split into: (i) a first portion of ray data which comprises core ray data for the ray, and (ii) a second portion of ray data which comprises non-core ray data for the ray, and
the first portion of ray data for each of the rays is stored in the first memory, and the second portion of ray data for each of the rays is stored in the second memory;
wherein the processing system is configured to support a predetermined number of different ray sizes, and wherein the second memory has a plurality of memory spaces for storing non-core ray data for rays, each of the memory spaces being arranged to store non-core ray data for rays of a particular size, and wherein the control logic is configured to send non-core ray data for a particular ray to one of the memory spaces based on the size of the particular ray.