Real-time ray tracing on future mobile computing platform

Abstract

In this work, we present a novel mobile computing platfom for mobile ray tracing in which a fast compact hardware accelerator and a flexible programmable shader are combined. Our platform has two key features: 1) an area-efficient parallel pipelined traversal unit; and 2) flexible and high-performance kernels for shading and ray generation. Simulation results show that our platform is potentially a versatile graphics solution for future application processors as it provides a real-time ray tracing performance at full HD resolution that can compete with that of existing desktop GPU ray tracers. Our system is implemented on an FPGA platform, and mobile ray tracing is successfully demonstrated.