I used to program maps in AS3 like you, but then I took a Pixel Bender in the knee. Since then I have been using Pixel Bender to do parallel calculations on arrays. Can Stage3D be used for this?
Example of using Pixel Bender for calculation:
My goal is to get a vector of [x1, y1, x2, y,2 , . . ., xn, yn]
and return a vector of [f(x1), f(y1), f(x2), f(y2), . . . ,f(xn), f(yn)]
. More like f(x1, y1).x , f(x1,y1).y
. I am sure you get the general idea.
What we normally call a map. Here is a thorough explaination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_%28higher-order_function%29
I noticed that with Pixel Bender I can accomplish this with a speed boost of 10x. Is there any way to do the same thing with Stage3D.
Unlike other languages such as c++, I'm not aware of a way to direct assembly instructions to the GPU beyond Program3D Shaders with Adobe Graphics Assembly Language.
Not approaching the performance you are obtaining with Pixel Bender, it should be noted that you could leverage ActionScript Workers to parallelize your functors.
With Adobe Premium Features, Alchemy / FlasCC, XC APIs, Pixel Bender, and ActionScript Next on the way, it's an exciting time for the rapidly progressing Flash platform.