Khronos moves OpenGL graphics API to v4.0

LONDON — The Khronos Group, an industry consortium focused on developing multimedia standards and application programming interfaces (APIs), has announced the release of the OpenGL 4.0 specification; an update to a widely adopted 2-D and 3-D graphics API.

The standard specification is available immediately and provides performance, quality and flexibility enhancements including tessellation and double precision shaders. It also includes tight integration with OpenCL, a Khronos framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, graphics processor units and other processors.

The OpenGL 4.0 specification includes an update to the OpenGL Shading language in order to enable developers to access the latest generation of GPU performance. The full specification is available for immediate download at http://www.opengl.org

OpenGL 4.0 includes two new shader stages that enable the GPU to perform the geometry tessellation otherwise done by the CPU; drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention; 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.

Khronos has also released an OpenGL 3.3 specification for improved performance on previous generation GPU hardware.

"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 3-D 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, in a statement issued by Khronos. "Nvidia is pleased to announce that its upcoming Fermi-based graphics accelerators will fully support OpenGL 4.0 at launch."