A fractal is a mathematical set that typically displays self-similar patterns, which means it is “The same from near as from far”. Fractals may be exactly the same at every scale; they may be nearly the same at different scales. The concept of fractal extends beyond trivial self-similarity and includes the idea of a detailed pattern repeating itself. The algorithms to constructing different fractal shapes in many cases typically involve large amounts of floating point computation, to which modern GPUs are well suited.