An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that is highly praised for its realism and image quality. Nonetheless, this is a computationally intensive task that is slow compared to other rendering techniques like rasterization. Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) is a primitive subdivision acceleration mechani...

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Main Authors: Ernesto Rivera-Alvarado, Julio Zamora-Madrigal
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica 2023-03-01
Series:Tecnología en Marcha
Subjects:
Online Access:https://172.20.14.50/index.php/tec_marcha/article/view/6098
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author Ernesto Rivera-Alvarado
Julio Zamora-Madrigal
author_facet Ernesto Rivera-Alvarado
Julio Zamora-Madrigal
author_sort Ernesto Rivera-Alvarado
collection DOAJ
description Ray tracing is a rendering technique that is highly praised for its realism and image quality. Nonetheless, this is a computationally intensive task that is slow compared to other rendering techniques like rasterization. Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) is a primitive subdivision acceleration mechanism that is the mainly used method for accelerating ray tracing in modern solutions. It is regarded as having better performance against other acceleration methods. Another well-known technique is Kd-Trees that uses binary space partitioning to adaptively subdivide space with planes. In this research, we made an up-to-date evaluation of both acceleration structures, using state-of-the-art BVH and Kd-Trees algorithms implemented in C, and found out that the Kd-Trees acceleration structure provided better performance in all defined scenarios on a modern x86 CPU architecture.
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publisher Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica
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spelling doaj-art-a84e9a565fac4b24bcd81f12233be6b02025-08-20T03:18:49ZengInstituto Tecnológico de Costa RicaTecnología en Marcha0379-39822215-32412023-03-0136210.18845/tm.v36i2.6098An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architecturesErnesto Rivera-AlvaradoJulio Zamora-MadrigalRay tracing is a rendering technique that is highly praised for its realism and image quality. Nonetheless, this is a computationally intensive task that is slow compared to other rendering techniques like rasterization. Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) is a primitive subdivision acceleration mechanism that is the mainly used method for accelerating ray tracing in modern solutions. It is regarded as having better performance against other acceleration methods. Another well-known technique is Kd-Trees that uses binary space partitioning to adaptively subdivide space with planes. In this research, we made an up-to-date evaluation of both acceleration structures, using state-of-the-art BVH and Kd-Trees algorithms implemented in C, and found out that the Kd-Trees acceleration structure provided better performance in all defined scenarios on a modern x86 CPU architecture. https://172.20.14.50/index.php/tec_marcha/article/view/6098ray tracingCPUBVHKD-Treesacceleration structuresmodern hardware
spellingShingle Ernesto Rivera-Alvarado
Julio Zamora-Madrigal
An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
Tecnología en Marcha
ray tracing
CPU
BVH
KD-Trees
acceleration structures
modern hardware
title An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
title_full An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
title_fullStr An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
title_full_unstemmed An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
title_short An evaluation of Kd-Trees vs Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) acceleration structures in modern CPU architectures
title_sort evaluation of kd trees vs bounding volume hierarchy bvh acceleration structures in modern cpu architectures
topic ray tracing
CPU
BVH
KD-Trees
acceleration structures
modern hardware
url https://172.20.14.50/index.php/tec_marcha/article/view/6098
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