A VLSI architecture for bicubic surface patch image generation

A VLSI architecture is presented for generating ray-tracing images of bicubic surface in Bezier form by using the subdivision algorithm. It uses a set of tree transverse operators to find the nearest intersection between a surface patch and a ray by traversing the entire subdivision tree in preorder. This scheme retains the advantage of subdivision and substantially reduces the circuit area by eliminating the need for a stack to store control points of intermediate bicubic patches. It also eliminates the multiplications needed in the subdivision iteration. The time to traverse additional nodes is offset by the removal of the stack memory access time. The performance of the architecture is analyzed and compared with the alternative approaches.<>