Khronos announces the OpenGL 3.3/4.0 Specifications Simultaneously

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
http://www.khronos.org/news/press/re...ration-opengl4



OpenGL Registry to download the specs: http://www.opengl.org/registry/



Excerpted:



Quote:

OpenGL 4.0 further improves the close interoperability with OpenCL™ for accelerating computationally intensive visual applications. OpenGL 4.0 also continues support for both the Core and Compatibility profiles first introduced with OpenGL 3.2, enabling developers to use a streamlined API or retain backwards compatibility for existing OpenGL code, depending on their market needs.
  • OpenGL 4.0 has been specifically designed to bring significant benefits to application developers, including:

  • two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU;

  • per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions for increased rendering quality and anti-aliasing flexibility;

  • drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention;

  • shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility;

  • separation of texture state and texture data through the addition of a new object type called sampler objects;

  • 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality;

  • performance improvements, including instanced geometry shaders, instanced arrays, and a new timer query.

Lastly, Khronos has simultaneously released an OpenGL 3.3 specification, together with a set of ARB extensions, to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous generation GPU hardware; providing maximum flexibility and platform coverage for application developers. The full OpenGL 3.3 specification is also available for immediate download at http://www.opengl.org/registry



“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,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, OpenGL ARB working group chair and senior manager Core OpenGL at NVIDIA. “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,” said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of design engineering at AMD. “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.”



“OpenGL 4.0 continues the ARB’s schedule-driven roll-out of new functionality, and this significant major release enables developers to access leading-edge GPU functionality across multiple platforms with full backwards compatibility,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president at NVIDIA. “OpenGL continues to be a keystone in the Khronos API ecosystem, through driving innovation into OpenGL ES and WebGL™ to bring high-performance programmable graphics to mobile platforms and the Web, and by interoperating with OpenCL to create a seamless visual and compute platform for application developers.”



Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    bertpbertp Posts: 274member
    I presume that Apple is in the process of upgrading OpenGL in a later Mac OS X release. In other words, enabling OpenGL 3.0 and later. Would this upgrade make the implementation of resolution independence easier? For example, providing an efficient method for Apple to dynamically render icons for itself and third parties?
  • Reply 2 of 8
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BertP View Post


    I presume that Apple is in the process of upgrading OpenGL in a later Mac OS X release. In other words, enabling OpenGL 3.0 and later. Would this upgrade make the implementation of resolution independence easier? For example, providing an efficient method for Apple to dynamically render icons for itself and third parties?



    Yes. OpenGL 3.3/4.0 positioning itself to be able to make any platform device been resolution independent, with it's marriage of OpenCL.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    bertpbertp Posts: 274member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    Yes. OpenGL 3.3/4.0 positioning itself to be able to make any platform device been resolution independent, with it's marriage of OpenCL.



    I had not thought of the OpenCL aspect. I appreciate hearing from someone more knowledgeable about graphic capabilities than I know about.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Plus there's a lot of extensions that would make porting games and other apps that depend on DX a lot easier.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BenRoethig View Post


    Plus there's a lot of extensions that would make porting games and other apps that depend on DX a lot easier.



    Sounds great!



    Does anyone know why the recent versions of GLSL hasn't been implemented?

    Who are responsible for the OS X OpenGL implementations?

    Is wouldn't still be Silicon Graphics since they're defunct..
  • Reply 6 of 8
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    ...

    Is wouldn't still be Silicon Graphics since they're defunct..



    Not quite.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post


    Not quite.



    Ahh. My mistake. They were bought by another company.

    Are they still responsible for updating the OS X OpenGL implementation?
  • Reply 8 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Wow after an initial slowdown the OpenGL ARB is

    kicking butt and taking names.



    I hear that OpenCL 2.0 is due in 2012 and by then we'll likely be working with a solid

    OpenGL 4.x. I wonder how quickly Apple will put OpenGL 3.3 or 4.0 into 10.7
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