Getting rid of packets - Efficient SIMD single-ray traversal using multi-branching BVHs -

Abstract

While contemporary approaches to SIMD ray tracing typically rely on traversing packets of coherent rays through a binary data structure, we instead evaluate the alternative of traversing individual rays through a bounding volume hierarchy with a branching factor of 16. Though obviously less efficient than high-performance packet techniques for primary rays, we demonstrate that for less coherent secondary ray distributions this approach is at least competitive with (and often faster than) typical packet traversal techniques.