Description

VecGeom [1] project aims at providing a high-performance library for geometry modelling and geometry queries in the context of particle transport simulation in hierarchic 3D geometries, described in terms of solids. The library provides vectorized ray-solid intersection algorithms and other geometry-specific functionality that make use of fine-grained SIMD and SIMT parallelism.

Core tasks of VecGeom are similar to the ones used in ray-tracing. The project aims to study how we can yet better profit from interfacing with specialized ray-tracing kernel libraries such as Intel Embree [2]. The student is expected to push the effort based on a prototype interface already available in our code. This project should be good for anyone interested in computer graphics, ray-tracing, particle simulation, etc.

Task ideas

• Improve VecGeom’s tessellated solid: implement a special version of a meshed (tessellated) solid using Intel Embree to find a rough intersection point in floating point precision, then dispatch to a higher precision distance calculation.
• Directly query Embree’s in-memory bounding box acceleration structure from within VecGeom. At the moment this is only done indirectly, restricting the performance gains.
• Implement a fast “isotropic minimal” distance calculation based on the in-memory Embree acceleration structure.

Expected results

Improve compute performance of VecGeom in certain areas as well as reduce long-term code maintenance.

Desirable Skills

• Familiar with advanced C++ features (at least templates)
• Interest in algorithms and code optimization

Mentors

• Sandro Wenzel
• Mihaela Gheata

Links

1. Gitlab repository of VecGeom
2. Embree high-performance ray tracing kernels library

Corresponding Project

• VecGeom

Participating Organizations

• CERN
• ISS

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