Issue 001 Pipeline Q3 2006 The official ARB Newsletter Full PDF print edition In This Issue: A Message from the ARB Secretary . 1 New Texture Functions [...] to Avoid Ugly Artifacts . 3 A Welcome Message from the Ecosystem Working Group. 2 Improved Synchronization Across GPUs and CPUs [...]. 5 Free OpenGL Debug Tools for Academic Users . 2 OpenGL ARB & Khronos Group SIGGRAPH 2006 Schedule . 5 Superbuffers Working Group Update . 3 A Message from the ARB Secretary single API. Mobile devices have grown more powerful and added back many features missing from OpenGL ES Welcome to the first issue of OpenGL Pipeline, the official 1.0. And with programmable graphics pipelines com- newsletter of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. Welcome mon, we may be ready to phase out redundant and — and goodbye — because this will probably be the last issue! legacy features from OpenGL. Now that I have your attention: this doesn’t mean that the • The OpenGL ARB Working Group can work closely newsletter is going away. But the ARB itself is going away! Why? with other APIs in Khronos. For example, we might Where? How? What does this mean for OpenGL standardization? eventually replace the GLX/WGL/AGL APIs with EGL, a Read on. cross-platform equivalent developed in Khronos. When Kurt Akeley and Mark Segal created OpenGL in the early • The OpenGL ARB Working Group and the rest of Khro- 1990s, the 3D industry was very different. Graphics hardware was nos can pool efforts on SDKs and documentation. For restricted to workstations and servers costing tens of thousands example, the OpenGL extension registry will grow into of dollars and up. There was no 3D games industry (Id’s DOOM a registry for all the Khronos APIs. wouldn’t even come out for a few more years). And hardware was very, very restricted in what it could do. • Finally, OpenGL and Khronos can more efficiently share administrative, logistical, and website support The ARB was set up to govern OpenGL, drawing on a group of from the Gold Standard Group. high-end workstation and simulator manufacturers: DEC, Evans and Sutherland, HP, IBM, SGI, and others. But in the late 1990s, From a developer’s viewpoint, there’ll be little change. The graphics hardware started to get cheaper, pervasive, and eventu- opengl.org website and boards will continue, though we may ally much more capable, thanks to a new generation of compa- merge the underlying webhost with khronos.org. The standards nies like 3dfx, 3Dlabs, ATI, and NVIDIA. The ARB membership has process will operate much as it does today, although we will co- reflected this change. Most of the innovations in OpenGL today ordinate our releases and announcements with other Khronos come from those “consumer graphics” companies. APIs. Now 3D acceleration is moving to cell phones, and OpenGL Not much will change in our day-to-day operation, either. is there, too, as OpenGL ES, a subset of OpenGL created in the Khronos and ARB processes are very similar. Other Khronos mem- Khronos Group. Khronos is an entity similar to the ARB, but more ber companies will be able to join in our working groups. widely focused, developing authoring (Collada), digital media/ imaging (OpenMAX and OpenML), 3D (OpenGL ES), 2D (OpenVG), Merging is a complicated process and will take months to and sound (OpenSL ES) APIs. complete, but is well underway. So, the next quarterly issue of “OpenGL Pipeline” will probably be published by the Khronos We’ve decided that the future health of OpenGL — in all its Group, not the ARB, and will probably be expanded to cover forms — will be best served by moving OpenGL into Khronos, OpenGL ES and perhaps other Khronos APIs. We’ll talk more about too. There are many advantages, such as: the status of the merger at the SIGGRAPH OpenGL BOF Session. The OpenGL and OpenGL ES groups can communicate under It’s been my privilege and my pleasure to serve as the OpenGL the same set of intellectual property rules. IP rules are to stan- ARB Secretary since joining SGI in 1997. Now I’m looking forward dards like dental checkups are to you: unpleasant, but essential to to a new stage in the evolution of OpenGL. Come along for the avoid pain in the future. ride! • OpenGL and OpenGL ES might converge back into a Jon Leech ARB Secretary OpenGL Pipeline, The Official ARB Newsletter | q3 2006, Issue 001 Page 1 Pipeline The official ARB Newsletter A Welcome Message from the Benj Lipchak ATI, Ecosystem Working Group Chair Ecosystem Working Group “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain Free OpenGL Debug Tools Welcome to the first edition of OpenGL Pipeline, the quarterly for Academic Users newsletter covering all things the OpenGL standards body has Here is some great news for students and academic OpenGL “in the pipeline.” Each issue will feature status updates from the users! The OpenGL ARB and Graphic Remedy have crafted an various active working groups, along with a handful of thoughtful Academic Program to make the full featured gDEBugger OpenGL articles, event announcements, and product spotlights. Then if debug toolkit available for use in your daily work and research there’s any room leftover, we’ll throw in a semi-informative ram- — free of charge! bling or two. All we can promise is that this publication will be worth every penny you’ve paid for it. gDEBugger, for those of you who are not famil- The Ecosystem Working Group was formed in March of this ��������� iar with it yet, is a powerful year. Its charter is to tackle “everything else.” We leave the heavy OpenGL and OpenGL ES lifting — debating new OpenGL features, generating new APIs, debugger and profiler delivering one of the most intuitive OpenGL and writing extension specs — to the other highly skilled work- development toolkits available for graphics application develop- ing groups. They are the rock stars. In contrast, the Ecosystem ers. gDEBugger helps you save precious debugging time and WG is the unsung hero working backstage to increase the impact boost your application’s performance. It traces application activi- of all those new features. We are the wind beneath their wings, ty on top of the OpenGL API to provide the necessary information if you will. to find bugs and to optimize application rendering performance. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word ecosystem means “an ecological community together with its en- vironment, functioning as a unit.” To us in the Ecosystem WG it means all of the resources on the periphery serving as a develop- ment environment to make OpenGL more useful or accessible to you, the community. We started by conducting a poll on opengl. org to find out what you were most interested in our tackling first. Was it reference materials? Tutorials & sample code? Tools & utili- ties? A test suite? No. 67% of you chose “OpenGL SDK: a single SDK sponsored by the ARB, endorsed by all vendors, with some/ The ARB—Graphic Remedy Academic Program will run for all of the above.” In other words, you want it all. We get it. one year during which time any OpenGL developer who is able to confirm they are in academia will receive an Academic gDEBugger Ecosystem WG activities over the last quarter have included License from Graphic Remedy at no cost. This license will be valid the following: planning for the launch of an OpenGL SDK, estab- for one year and will include all gDEBugger software updates as lishing a modern toolchain for generating reference documenta- they become available. Academic licensees may also optionally tion, and revamping naming convention guidelines for the other decide to purchase an annual support contract for the software at working groups to utilize when creating future APIs. Work next the reduced rate of $45 (or $950 for an academic institution). quarter will focus on generating OpenGL 2.1 reference materials and starting to piece together the SDK, soliciting contributions There are also a limited number of free licenses available for from the OpenGL community at large. non-commercial developers who are not in academia. The second most popular response to the poll was “Better gDEBugger is rapidly developing a strong following. It is al- communications: what has the ARB been doing and what are its ready being used in many universities and by graphics hardware future plans?” which segues nicely into this newsletter. Regard- vendors such as NVIDIA and ATI. It is being put to use in the less of the poll, you may find yourself asking, “Why, after all these realms of game development, film, visual simulations, medical years, is the OpenGL standards body finally opening up and shar- applications, military and defense applications, CAD, and several ing with its audience, its devoted developers, its enthusiastic end- other markets. There is no need to make any changes to your users, its people?” It must be a maturity thing. It took us a solid source code or recompile your application. Simply run your appli- 14+ years to shed our youthful shyness and find a voice. The last cation in gDEBugger and start tuning it. gDEBugger works with decade was just an awkward phase. We’re over it now. This news- all current graphic hardware products. It supports NVIDIA GPU letter is just the beginning of OpenGL’s long anticipated coming performance counters via NVPerfKit, NVIDIA GLExpert driver re- of age. ports, ATI GPU Performance Metrics, the latest version of OpenGL and many additional OpenGL and WGL extensions. It is available “I’m not dead yet!” — Monty Python for the Windows operating system with a Linux version under de- OpenGL Pipeline, The Official ARB Newsletter | Q3 2006, Issue 001 Page 2 Pipeline The official ARB Newsletter velopment.