A Parallel Architecture for Ray-Tracing

Real time rendering of three-dimensional scenes in high photorealistic detail is a hard task, such as in the Ray Tracing rendering algorithm. However, parallel implementations of Ray Tracing have been enabling real time performance, as the algorithm is embarrassingly parallel. Thus, a custom parallel design in hardware is likely to achieve an acceptable performance. In this paper, we propose a hardware parallel architecture capable of dealing with the main desirable features of Ray Tracing, such as shadows and reflection effects, imposing low area cost and acceptable rendering performance.