PPU and rendering...

Ok this might be a stupid question... But is it possible for the PPU to speed up lighting calculations and rendering in programs such as 3d Studio or any similar modeling and rendering program or plugin? I'm assuming it can easily calculate each bounce of light which should greatly speed up the rendering of complex lighting and scenes...

Any thoughts on this?

Sure its possible, but might be a pain to implement without an api for general purpose programming on the thing.

It's definitely possible. xNormal is a free PPU-accelerated normal mapping tool, apparently 3DS compatible. I think it can pull off some other stuff as well, though most of the terminology went straight over my head...

EDIT: I can't actually find a mention of the PPU acceleration anywhere other than his Sept05 / Jan06 blogs. Seems strange that it's not mentioned on the projects page, especially now that people actually have PPUs...