SSAATRIASVRRealtime Ray Tracingon current CPU ArchitecturesCarsten BenthinComputer Graphics GroupSaarland University66123 Saarbru¨ cken, GermanyDissertation zur Erlangung des GradesDoktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften (Dr.-Ing.)der Naturwissenschaftlich-Technischen Fakult¨at Ider Universit¨at des SaarlandesIEEVNISNISUBetreuender Hochschullehrer / Supervisor:Prof. Dr.-Ing. Philipp SlusallekUniversita¨t des Saarlandes, Saarbru¨cken, GermanyGutachter / Reviewers:Prof. Dr.-Ing. Philipp SlusallekUniversita¨t des Saarlandes, Saarbru¨cken, GermanyProf. Dr. rer. nat. Hans-Peter SeidelMPI Informatik, Saarbru¨cken, GermanyResearch Assistant Professor Steven G. ParkerUniversity of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USADekan / Dean:Prof. Dr. rer. nat. J¨org EschmeierUniversita¨t des Saarlandes, Saarbru¨cken, GermanyEingereicht am / Thesis submitted:30. Januar 2006 / Jan 30st, 2006Carsten BenthinLehrstuhl fur Computergraphik, Geb. 36.1/E14¨Im Stadtwald, 66123 Saarbru¨ckenGermanybenthin@graphics.cs.uni-sb.deiiiAbstractIn computer graphics, ray tracing has become a powerful tool for generatingrealistically looking images. Even though ray tracing offers high flexibility,a logarithmic scalability in scene complexity, and is known to be efficientlyparallelizable, its demand for compute power has in the past lead to itslimitation to high-quality off-line rendering.