Accelerates graphics and improves interoperability with OpenCL

Mar 12, 2010 08:50 GMT  ·  By
Khronos completes OpenGL 4.0 specifications, will be supported by Fermi at launch
   Khronos completes OpenGL 4.0 specifications, will be supported by Fermi at launch

The OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos has finished defining the OpenGL 4.0 specification, which promises to enable advanced functionality and the latest cross-platform graphics acceleration on all personal computers and workstations. Through the new specification, graphics developers will be able to take advantage of the latest GPU functionality across multiple platforms and operating systems.

One of the actual features that the OpenGL 4.0 includes is a pair of new shader stages, which enable the graphics processing unit (GPU) to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU. The specification also enables per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions, which increase the rendering quality and the flexibility of anti-aliasing. Furthermore, the GPUs will also, from now on, be able to draw data generated by either OpenGL or external APIs, like OpenCL, without intervention from the central processor. Programming flexibility will be further improved by shader subroutines and performance will also be optimized, through the addition of such elements as instanced geometry shaders, instanced arrays and a new timer query.

In addition to these graphical optimizations, the new OpenGL standard also provides an increased rendering quality and accuracy, through 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs, as well as separation of texture state and texture data through the addition of a new object type called sampler objects.

“The release of OpenGL 4.0 is a major step forward in bringing state-of-the-art functionality to cross-platform graphics acceleration, and strengthens OpenGL’s leadership position as the epicenter of 3D graphics on the web, on mobile devices as well as on the desktop,” Barthold Lichtenbelt, OpenGL ARB working group chair and senior manager Core OpenGL at NVIDIA, said. “NVIDIA is pleased to announce that its upcoming Fermi-based graphics accelerators will fully support OpenGL 4.0 at launch.”

“AMD sees the release of OpenGL 4.0 as another major accomplishment for the OpenGL ARB. AMD contributes to the Khronos workgroups, and we consistently find that Khronos is successful at developing healthy, thriving, and evolving open standards such as OpenGL and OpenCL,” Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of design engineering at AMD, explained.

In addition to enabling the latest performance and visual improvements, Khronos has also made available an upgraded OpenGL 3.3 specification, which includes a set of ARB extensions that will provide some previous-generation GPUs with part of the functionality within OpenGL 4.0.