Java Ray Tracer for TornadoVM

Description

This project aims to build a real-time ray tracer in Java, accelerated on heterogeneous hardware using TornadoVM.

The project uses JavaFX to obtain a canvas for a graphical context to draw on and to build an interactive graphical user interface, while the entire rendering process consists of manual calculation of the colors of the pixels through tracing rays, applying the Blinn-Phong shading model and sampling soft shadows.

The embarrassingly parallel property of ray tracing allows for concurrent computation of each individual pixel color, achieving up to 930x performance increase on an Nvidia RTX2060 GPU against the default sequential Java execution on an Intel i7-8550u CPU.

Installation

1. Clone the project:

git clone https://github.com/Vinhixus/TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer.git

2. Install dependencies:

• Install TornadoVM (via SDKMAN!)

TornadoVM is distributed through our official website and SDKMAN!. Install a version that matches your OS, architecture, and accelerator backend.

All TornadoVM SDKs are available on the SDKMAN! TornadoVM page.

sdk install tornadovm

• Use JDK 21 or JDK 25

TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer builds and runs with JDK 21 or JDK 25, as long as the installed TornadoVM distribution matches the JDK in use (TornadoVM ships separate jdk21 and jdk25 builds). The Maven build auto-detects the running JDK and selects the matching TornadoVM dependency:

JDK	Maven profile (auto-activated)	TornadoVM dependency
21.x	jdk21	tornado-api *-jdk21
25.0.2+	jdk25	tornado-api *-jdk25

sdk install java 21.0.2-open    # for JDK 21
sdk install java 25.0.2-open    # for JDK 25

• Download the JavaFX SDK for your system from: JavaFX downloads. You will need the path of the JavaFX SDK for Step 3.

Note that TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer has been tested with JavaFX version 18.

3. Set up the environment and store the variables in a file (e.g. sources.env):

cd TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer
vim sources.env
export TORNADO_RAY_TRACER_ROOT="${PWD}"
export PATH="${PATH}:${TORNADO_RAY_TRACER_ROOT=}/bin"
export JAVAFX_SDK=<path to JavaFX>/javafx-sdk-18/

Load the environment:

source sources.env

4. Build TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer:

mvn clean install

The JDK profile is selected automatically from the JDK running Maven. To force a specific variant regardless of the running JDK:

mvn clean install -P jdk21,'!jdk25'   # force the JDK 21 variant

5. Run TornadoVM-Ray-Tracer:

With GUI:

tornadovm-ray-tracer

Without GUI in benchmarking mode:

tornadovm-ray-tracer benchmark

Author

Vinh Pham Van

LinkedIn: vinh-pham-van
Email: phamvvinh1998@gmail.com

With special thanks to:

Christos Kotselidis: Supervisor & TornadoVM Project Leader
Juan Fumero: TornadoVM Lead Architect
Thanos Stratikopoulos: TornadoVM Senior Solutions Architect
Maria Xekalaki: TornadoVM Principal Software Engineer
Florin Blanaru: TornadoVM Senior Software Engineer

Licenses