OpenCL GPGPU Raytracing

Contact "brlcad" on irc.freenode.net

BRL-CAD has one of the oldest and fastest parallel ray tracing implementations around but we don't currently leverage the GPU. With implicit geometry and constructive solid geometry (CSG) Boolean operations, we also have a very different approach to ray tracing that has its own set of academic challenges.

Your project is to help us introduce a GPGPU pipeline into BRL-CAD using OpenCL. You're welcome to use a library that encapsulates CUDA and OpenCL, but the latter is our priority. We have two dozen primitives in BRL-CAD that need to be converted to OpenCL. One of them is done (an ellipsoid), so you have an example to follow. Your objective is to implement at least two more while evaluating how your conversion compares to the non-GPGPU implementation.

Difficulty: Easy

Languages: C and OpenCL (or other GPGPU API)