I've been given a free choice of final project for my software development course, I'm quite interested in attempting a distributed programming task, My initial thought was to create a simple photon scattering renderer but I don't think I'd get far past rendering platonic solids and metaballs.
Any suggestions, or interesting areas I might want to explore?
A simple suggestion is to take any NP complete problem, with a known good solution and parallelize it to produce at least a single better answer than has been previously documented. But personally I would choose something I am interested in, like finding a more accurate equilibrium strategy for poker.
Go with your interests and what you know best. When ever I'm attempting a new programming algorithm or data structure or design I try to work it into the framework of a Multi User Dungeon. I've been doing Multi User Dungeon design since I began programming and it's what got me into programming. I know the domain backwards and forward and can instantly think of a use for most algorithms or data structures in that framework. It allows me to focus only on the problem at hand and not on the side problems.
If you're very familiar with graphic programming do that. If you're not, pick some other domain that you know backwards and forwards and try to find some part of it that would benefit from being distributed. Then use that.