A kernel in OctaneRender® is the central part of the rendering engine that interfaces with the rendering hardware (a graphics card or GPUThe GPU is responsible for displaying graphical elements on a computer display. The GPU plays a key role in the Octane rendering process as the CUDA cores are utilized during the rendering process.).
There are five major rendering kernels in OctaneRender: Direct Lighting, Path Tracing, PMC, Path Tracing, and Info Channel. Each kernel has a set of parameters for the user to adjust. You can set the Kernel type in the Octane Render Target parameters under the Main tab, and the corresponding Kernel tab updates accordingly (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Accessing the Kernel settings in an Octane Render Target node