Hasta La Gadget!

SIGGRAPH has only just begun, but the Khronos Group is already giving folks of the graphics programming persuasion some fresh APIs to talk about. Yesterday marked the release of the OpenCL 2.0 provisional specification, and it’s boasting an Android installable client driver extension, along with improvements to image handling, shared virtual memory and more. It’s expected that the new version of OpenCL will be finalized in six month’s time, and feedback regarding the changes are being welcomed. The fresh OpenGL 4.4 spec revamps everything from shaders to asynchronous queries while keeping full backwards compatibility, and includes additional functions to make porting Direct3D apps a smoother process. If parallel programming and cross-platform graphics are your thing, hit the break for the full feature breakdown in the press release.

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Source: Khronos Group (1), (2)

With the SIGGRAPH kickoff, the Khronos group has just announced Open GL ES 3.0, an updated version of the popular graphics API (application programming interface) that is going to bring new features to mobile devices that support it. Recently, we took an early look at the Snapdragon S4 Pro which runs it. There are a lot of new features, but in a nutshell, here are the ones that I found more interesting:

– Tighter specifications to avoid incompatibilities between different devices. The goal is to help developers by preventing graphics vendors to stray too far away from the intent of the specifications.

– Depth textures that can be used to create shadow maps, a more advanced shadow technique that allows objects to cast shadows on themselves.

– Occlusion queries allow developers to use the hardware to test the visibility of objects against the Z-buffer to avoid processing objects hidden behind others.

– ETC2/EAC texture compression. Some chips still use the older S3TC texture compression. The new ETC2 compressed texture format is more space-efficient and this is particularly important given that textures have rapidly grown in size, along with screen pixel density. With better texture compression, games can go “HD” without getting much bigger in download size.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: OpenGL gets updated to 4.3 [SIGGRAPH], OpenGL 4.1 graphics library released,

It’s been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos — that great keeper of open standards — to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn’t settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been “relaxed” for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos’s certification is just a formality at this point, and that today’s news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Continue reading ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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