Trying to find a way to make this as simd friendly as possible. Perhaps a kernel for calucation and then a kernel to "clean" the back buffer

Conway_OpenCL/conway_compute.cl

@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+__kernel void conway(__global unsigned char* front_grid, __global unsigned char* rear_grid, __global unsigned char* pixel_out, __global int* num_workers, __global int* grid_width, __global int* grid_height)
+{
+	// Caclulate the start and end range that this worker will be calculating
+
+	int data_length = *grid_width * *grid_height;
+
+	int start_range = (data_length / *num_workers) * get_global_id(0);
+	int end_range = (data_length / *num_workers) * (get_global_id(0) + 1);
+	
+	// x, y + 1
+
+	int neighbors = 0;
+
+	for (int i = start_range; i < end_range; i++){
+		
+		// add all 8 blocks to neighbors
+		neighbors = 0;
+
+		// Top
+		neighbors += front_grid[i - *grid_width];
+
+		// Top right
+		neighbors += front_grid[i - *grid_width + 1];
+
+		// Right
+		neighbors += front_grid[i + 1];
+
+		// Bottom Right
+		neighbors += front_grid[i + *grid_width + 1];
+
+		// Bottom
+		neighbors += front_grid[i + *grid_width];
+
+		// Bottom Left
+		neighbors += front_grid[i + *grid_width - 1];
+
+		// Left
+		neighbors += front_grid[i - 1];
+
+		// Top left
+		neighbors += front_grid[i - *grid_width - 1];
+
+
+		if (neighbors == 3 || (neighbors == 2 && front_grid[i])) {
+			rear_grid[i] = 1;
+			pixel_out[i * 4] = 255; // R
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 1] = 255; // G
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 2] = 255; // B
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 3] = 255; // A
+		}
+	
+		else {
+			rear_grid[i] = 0;
+			pixel_out[i * 4] = 49; // R
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 1] = 68; // G
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 2] = 72; // B
+			pixel_out[i * 4 + 3] = 255; // A
+		}
+
+	}
+}