David, sounds really like a lot of work, make sure to get your head free from time to time.
I don't program on more than one project for a longer time, but i am not a real programmer, so i havn't.
Of course, some GPU renderers already exists, and so far i know is scripting included in some shader languages.
No need to program all by yourself maybe...
Well I'm basically doing it "the hard way" to get my head round shaders generally before progressing on to full OpenCL etc.
Also of course at the moment full OpenCL is not available for iOS.
I never did any sophisticated OpenGL or DirectX programming before doing the free version of i.Candy for the iPhone - in fact the most I'd done using GPU's was some basic texture blitting in our PT Pocket Office VNC client.
All the previous mobile software we did (and the 3D Pets series we did for the PC) was done using my own code - in the case of 3D Pets almost entirely in assembler - I even have my own blitter API that I wrote for (Microsoft and Symbian) ARM devices entirely in assembler (like others that were available but faster and now just as obsolete).
I haven't yet even looked at the source for Mandelbulber because I have no idea what SVN is (I'm not much good with anything not designed by myself or at least when I haven't written the equivalent myself).
Don't worry about "my head", as long I don't go back on the wacky backy I'll be fine provided I can start forcing myself to get more sleep !!