Fractal graphics and image compression on a DAP

The work of M. Barnsley and others at Georgia Institute of Technology, (Byte, P.215, January 1988) is producing dramatic results for high compressed graphics and images using Fractal based techniques for both movies and stills. Compression ratios of around 10000 to 1 are claimed. An important limitation is that both compression and regeneration are computationally intensive; Barnsley has mentioned up to 100 hours to compress a high quality image on a Masscomp workstation, and 30 minutes for regeneration. Algorithmic advances are reducing these times, but this paper outlines how SIMD array processors (in particular, the AMT DAP 510) can dramatically improve the performance