Bounding Volume Hierarchies versus Kd-trees on Contemporary Many-Core Architectures

VINKLER, Marek, Vlastimil HAVRAN and Jiří BITTNER. Bounding Volume Hierarchies versus Kd-trees on Contemporary Many-Core Architectures. In Diego Gutierrez, Roman Ďurikovič. Proceedings of the 30th Spring Conference on Computer Graphics. Bratislava, Slovakia: Comenius University, Bratislava, 2014, p. 61-68. ISBN 978-1-4503-3070-1. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2643188.2643196.

Basic information

• Original name: Bounding Volume Hierarchies versus Kd-trees on Contemporary Many-Core Architectures
• Authors: VINKLER, Marek (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Vlastimil HAVRAN (203 Czech Republic) and Jiří BITTNER (203 Czech Republic).
• Edition: Bratislava, Slovakia, Proceedings of the 30th Spring Conference on Computer Graphics, p. 61-68, 8 pp. 2014.
• Publisher: Comenius University, Bratislava

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Proceedings paper
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: Slovakia
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: printed version "print"
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14330/14:00076259
• Organization unit: Faculty of Informatics
• ISBN: 978-1-4503-3070-1
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2643188.2643196
• Keywords in English: bounding volume hierarchy; kd-tree; performance study; ray tracing
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

We present a performance comparison of bounding volume hierarchies and kd-trees for ray tracing on many-core architectures (GPUs). The comparison is focused on rendering times and traversal characteristics on the GPU using data structures that were optimized for maximum performance of tracing rays irrespective of the time needed for their build. We show that for a contemporary GPU architecture (NVIDIA Kepler) bounding volume hierarchies have higher ray tracing performance than kd-trees for simple and moderately complex scenes. Kd-trees, on the other hand, have higher performance for complex scenes, in particular for those with occlusion.

Links

• LG13010, research and development project: Name: Zastoupení ČR v European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (Acronym: ERCIM-CZ)

Investor: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR

• MUNI/A/0765/2013, interní kód MU: Name: Zapojení studentů Fakulty informatiky do mezinárodní vědecké komunity (Acronym: SKOMU)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

• MUNI/A/0915/2013, interní kód MU: Name: Výzkum FI ve vybraných oblastech aplikované informatiky (Acronym: FI_Apl_Inf_2014)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A