Mandelbrot 32

A high-performance, hardware-accelerated Mandelbrot set renderer written in Rust using wgpu.

Overview

This project renders the Mandelbrot set in real-time using the GPU. It leverages wgpu for cross-platform graphics API support (Vulkan, Metal, DX12, WebGPU) and winit for window management. The rendering logic is implemented via a WGSL fragment shader, allowing for smooth zooming and panning.

Features

• GPU Acceleration: Utilizes the GPU for parallel fractal calculation, ensuring high frame rates.
• 32-bit Precision: Renders using 32-bit floating point precision.
• Real-time Rendering: Supports dynamic updates to zoom and position.
• Cross-Platform: Runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS thanks to the portable wgpu backend.

Prerequisites

• Rust (Latest stable toolchain).
• A graphics card compatible with Vulkan, Metal, DirectX 12, or WebGPU.

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/mterenzi/mandelbrot_32
   cd mandelbrot

2. Run the project:

   It is highly recommended to run in release mode for optimal performance.

   cargo run --release

Project Structure

• src/wgpu.rs: Handles the WGPU context setup, surface configuration, render pipeline creation, and the main render pass.
• src/primitives.rs: Defines the data structures (Vertex, Uniforms) shared between the CPU and the GPU.
• src/shaders/mandelbrot_32.wgsl: The shader source code responsible for calculating the Mandelbrot iterations per pixel.

Dependencies

• wgpu: Graphics API abstraction.
• winit: Window creation and event handling.
• bytemuck: Utilities for casting data to bytes for GPU buffers.
• pollster: Simple async executor for WGPU initialization.