Multi-pass apparatus and method for ray tracing shading. For example, one embodiment of
an apparatus comprises: graphics processing circuitry to execute a sequence of visibility
testing operations related to texels within a texture domain to generate visibility results; a
register or memory to store a texel mask; texel mask update circuitry/logic to update the texel
mask based on the visibility results, the texel mask comprising a plurality of bits to indicate
visibility of the texels within the texture domain, the texel mask update circuitry/logic to set a …