In general, ray-tracers spend up to 90% of their time performing
intersection tests.  I know POV is very optimized, but I would be
surprised if it still didn't spend most of its time doing intersections.

For more information on ray-tracing in general, you can take a look at a
(non-technical) paper that I wrote about it for a class last semester. 
It is at:
  http://students.cs.byu.edu/~buck/raytracing.html

Anyone know anything more specific?

- Jamis Buck
  buc### [at] csbyuedu
  http://students.cs.byu.edu/~buck

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