Simulations - Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 - page 569

Figure 12.14. The final rendering of the particle system.
12.2.3 Conclusion
The ability of the GPU to efficiently process many parallel data items simultaneously al-
lows the processing of many particles within a particle system. By using some new features
of Direct3D 11, we can maintain the particle system completely on the GPU and simply
control the update and rendering of the simulation with the CPU. This minimizes any syn-
chronization needed between the GPU and CPU, which allows the GPU to run as fast as
possible. In addition, we have seen how to render the resulting particles as quads, using an
additive blending technique.