Complex analysis is a beautifully vast field, so we’ll be focusing on the visual result more than the actual math behind it. The Mandelbrot set is based in the field of complex numbers. Instead of writing a basic “Hello World”, we’ll be writing a deceivingly simple application: a Mandelbrot set generator. We can essentially just think of this as a stripped down version of OpenGL, though the core functionality that is needed will still be available. Now, OpenGL on Android is distributed under a subset called OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES). To demonstrate the power of OpenGL, we’ll be writing a relatively basic application for an Android device. The entire source code of this tutorial is available on GitHub.

Before we begin, It is important that you are already familiar with the knowledge of writing Android applications and syntax of some C-like programming language. In this article, we will be building a simple Android application that uses OpenGL to render its content on screen. This means that we can take tasks that are otherwise incredibly repetitive and run them simultaneously.

We can create small programs called shaders that will run effectively on hundreds of cores at once. The main difference is that GPU supports massive parallel processing. If we were to run a program that is notably serial with no concurrent activity, then it will almost always be slower on a GPU core than a CPU core. GPU cores are in fact slower than CPU cores. GPU can significantly speed up many applications, but it has a very specific role in a computer. More importantly, though, it also provides hardware level access to a key feature: GPU. In general, this will avoid any clunk that we have because of interpreted or high level programming languages. It provides a very low level processing for graphics in both 2D and 3D. OpenGL is a powerful cross-platform API that allows for very close access to the system’s hardware in a variety of programming environments.

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