CUDA + OpenCL Mandelbrot

Build:

# Build both
make

# Not both
make cuda
make opencl

Run:

# CUDA 
./build/mandelbrot_cuda 1024 768

# OpenCL
./build/mandelbrot_opencl 1024 768

Result: out/mandelbrot_cuda.ppm and out/mandelbrot_opencl.ppm. Open them using smth idk(ppm viewer) ! Interactive viewer and recording

• Build the interactive OpenCL viewer:

make viewer_opencl

• Viewer CLI (args):
  • width height — window size (default 800x600)
  • zoom_per_frame — multiplicative zoom each frame (default 0.98, <1 zooms in)
  • pan_x pan_y — pan per frame in pixels (can be fractional; negative pan_x pans left)
  • record_file — optional output filename (if provided, frames are piped to ffmpeg)
  • fps — optional recording framerate (default 30)

Examples:

# Run interactive viewer (no recording)
./build/mandelbrot_viewer_opencl 1024 768 0.98

# Run and record to MP4 (zoom 0.98, pan left 0.5 pixels/frame, 30 fps)
./build/mandelbrot_viewer_opencl 1024 768 0.99 -0.5 -0.4 out/zoom.mp4 30

Notes and tips

• pan_x/pan_y are interpreted as pixels per frame and converted to complex-plane units by multiplying with the current scale (initially 3.0/width). So a value like -150 is very large (moves the center by ~-150*scale on the first frame).
• If the image becomes a flat color quickly, try:
  • smaller zoom (e.g. 0.995),
  • smaller pan (e.g. -0.5),
  • larger maxIter in the host code to reveal deeper detail.
• Recording requires ffmpeg installed and available in PATH.

Build/runtime notes:

• For CUDA you need the CUDA Toolkit and nvcc in PATH.
• For OpenCL you need headers and a provider library (we include CUDA OpenCL headers and link to CUDA's libOpenCL by default).