Optimized Implementation of Ray Tracing on Cell Broadband Engine

Abstract

Ray tracing is a global illumination based on rendering method. It could produce very high-quality image. But rendering is also a very time-consuming procedure. In this paper, we map a Whitted-style recursive ray tracing on Cell Broadband Engine processor (Cell BE) with a number of optimization techniques according to the architecture characteristics of Cell BE processor, which include adaptive task scheduling, software managed cache, double buffering, packets of primary rays through SIMD unit. Through experiments, we show our implementation can harness the Cell BE processing power to up-limit.