The quality of simulated effects in video games and VR is limited these days by processing power, not by a lack of algorithms; accurate models of complex physical phenomena such as global illumination and fluid dynamics are well known. However, these algorithms are often complex, placing high demands on memory and computing resources, and CPUs are simply not powerful enough to solve them quickly enough for use in interactive applications. Over the past few years, however, the raw computational power of GPUs has far surpassed that of CPUs. GPUs have therefore emerged as an attractive platform for accelerating both graphics and other algorithms.