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OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 2.0 Specs Released

Posted by Unknown on from the supercomputer-in-a-slot dept.

Via Ars comes news that the OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 2.0 were released yesterday. OpenGL 4.4 features a few new extensions, perhaps most importantly a few to ease porting applications from Direct3D. New bindless shaders have access to the entire virtual address space of the card, and new sparse textures allow streaming tiles of textures too large for the graphics card memory. Finally, the ARB has announced the first set of conformance tests since OpenGL 2.0, so going forward anything calling itself OpenGL must pass certification. The OpenCL 2.0 spec is still provisional, but now features a memory model that is a subset of C11, allowing sharing of complex data between the host and GPU and avoiding the overhead of copying data to and from the GPU (which can often make using OpenCL a losing proposition). There is also a new spec for an intermediate language: "'SPIR' stands for Standard Portable Intermediate Representation and is a portable non-source representation for OpenCL 1.2 device programs. It enables application developers to avoid shipping kernel source and to manage the proliferation of devices and drivers from multiple vendors. OpenCL SPIR will enable consumption of code from third party compiler front-ends for alternative languages, such as C++, and is based on LLVM 3.2. Khronos has contributed open source patches for Clang 3.2 to enable SPIR code generation." For full details see Khronos's OpenGL 4.4 announcement, and their OpenCL 2.0 announcement. Update: 07/23 20:17 GMT by U L : edxwelch notes that Anandtech published notes and slides from the SIGGRAPH announcement.

3 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OpenCL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you can't understand C, you have no business touching the GPU or even calling yourself a programmer.

  2. Re:OpenCL by kthreadd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nothing wrong with C, but you don't really need to limit your self to it just because the code is running on the GPU. Have a look at C++ AMP for example.

  3. Re:OpenCL by Musc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except for the fact that CUDA only works on nvidia devices, and OpenCL works on everything...

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