Abstract: Graphics hardware is undergoing a change from fixed-function pipelines to more programmable organizations that resemble general purpose stream processors. In this paper, we show that certain general algorithms, not normally associated with computer graphics, can be mapped to such designs. Specifically, we cast nonlinear optimization as a data streaming process that is well matched to modern graphics processors. Our framework is particularly well suited for solving image-based modeling problems since it can be used to represent a large and diverse class of these problems using a common formulation. We successfully apply this approach to two distinct image-based modeling problems: light field mapping approximation and fitting the Lafortune model to spatial bidirectional reflectance distribution functions. Comparing the performance of the graphics hardware implementation to a CPU implementation, we show more than 5-fold improvement.