Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> OK, so for anybody who knows about such things... Would it be feasible 
> to render an Iterated Function System image using a GPU? And would it be 
> any faster than using the CPU?

  From the little I know, Pixel Shader Model 3 supports branching and
looping, so I assume it might be possible to create a pixel shader which
colors pixels according to an iterated function system.

  However, if I'm not completely mistaken, pixel shaders are calculated
on a specific pixel and cannot re-use previous calculations from other
pixels which have been calculated with a pixel shader (because else it
would make parallelizing pixel shaders extremely difficult, if not
impossible). Thus you are limited to making a pixel shader routine
which is calculated on a per-pixel basis, without input from other
pixels.
  I assume that this means that you cannot create a pixel shader which
jumps around the screen and draws pixels here and there, as most IFS
fractals do. You are limited to calculate on single pixels, like for
example how the basic Mandelbrot set is calculated.

  Assuming it is indeed possible to implement some IFS fractals with
pixel shaders, then it may indeed be much faster than with the CPU.
That's because modern display cards can run a fair amount of shaders
in parallel.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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