Is OpenCL a suitable platform for algorithm development in health care systems?

Abstract: This thesis reviews if OpenCL is a suitable and cost effective platform for algorithm development in health care systems. Aspects such as maintainability, performance, portability and integration with high-level languages (in this case Python) are analyzed. The review is done by implementing one part of a dose calculation algorithm that is complex enough to provide a realistic case. The vision is that OpenCL can replace multiple platforms for both multi core CPU and GPU computing and removing the need of implementing an optimized version of an algorithm for every platform. To achieve performance-portability, automatic optimization is done using parameter tuning. Both its effects on performance and code structure  are analyzed. The conclusion is that OpenCL coupled with auto tuning is not a suitable platform due to problems with code structure, language limitations, programming-portability, tool  support and the effort and difficulty in implementing auto tuning.