Courtesy of the OpenCV 2.3 GPU code comes a neat snippet of code for using a template parameter for reading RGB or BGR ordered components when dealing with RGB triplets.
The Code
template <int blueIndex>
float rgb2grey(const float *src)
{return 0.114f*src[blueIndex^2] + 0.587f*src[1] + 0.299f*src[blueIndex];
}
Then to use the function you simply supply the index where the blue value resides to take care of the RGB vs BGR ordering.
For RGB ordering:
float g = rgb2grey(src);
And for BGR ordering:
float g = rgb2grey(src);
This only works for swapping R and B around and won’t work for more weird and wonderful orderings
The original OpenCV code can be found in modules/gpu/src/opencv2/gpu/device/detail/color.hpp.
Templates and CUDA
For me the fact that you can use template meta-programming is a real plus point of CUDA. It allows for good code re-use and the template expansion gives good scope for the compiler to optimise. It can also allow you to remove conditionals from kernels in appropriate circumstances – more in a future post!