1. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 1 ARB Roadmap Discussion Sacramento, June 2004

2. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 2 Two Topics To Discuss How are we doing? and Where are we going? ISV feedback from recent GLSL seminar series 3Dlabs is happy to share this information with the ARB A proposal for a high-level OpenGL roadmap “vision” A (hopefully) helpful framework for the ARB’s upcoming work The basis for the marketing groups messaging at SIGGRAPH and beyond The purpose of this presentation is to catalyze discussion Provide some backdrop for the ongoing ARB technical discussions To help the marketing group develop a strong and SIMPLE message

3. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 3 3Dlabs Developer Survey Conducted as part of the recent 3Dlabs GLSL Seminar Series 3 seminars in U.S., 1 in Canada, 1 in U.K., 1 in Germany Survey respondents were software developers Mostly professional applications Some universities and research labs Very little representation of the games industry 153 developers filled in technical surveys From 100 different companies Information provided on understanding it could be shared with the ARB

4. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 4 Frequency of OpenGL Spec Updates This is the perfect pace This is too fast OpenGL should change more rapidly or more radically

5. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 5 Importance of Floating-Point Textures 92 developers (79% of those responding) said they would see benefit from floating-point textures, either 16- or 32-bit No benefit Need 16-bit fp Need 32-bit fp Need 16-bit and/or 32-bit fp

6. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 6 Importance of Superbuffers Work More than ¾ of returned surveys indicated some aspect of the Superbuffers effort was important to them Total responses: 119 Incorporating pbuffer functionality (70) Incorporating render-to-texture functionality (91) Render-to-vertex-array (52) Framebuffer flexibility (64) Other (7)

7. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 7 Multiple Render Targets 79 developers (76% of those responding) said they would like to see the fragment shader be able to write out more than just color/depth values Total responses: 104 Only need color/depth 1 additional vec4 2-4 additional vec4s 5-10 additional vec4s More than 10 additional vec4s Other

8. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 8 Asynchronous Operations 80% of respondents said asynchronous operations like image download were important or might be important to them Yes No Maybe

9. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 9 Synchronization Primitives 33% of respondents (46) said they would use synch controls that provided finer-grained control than glFlush/Finish if they were part of core OpenGL, 45% more said that maybe they would Total responses: 140 Yes No Maybe Don’t understand what these are

10. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 10 Programmable Tessellation 83% of respondents had some interest in this feature Total responses: 139 I use it already Not interested Would use it Might use it

11. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 11 Precompiled/Prelinked Shaders Yes No Other

12. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 12 Shader IP Protection Yes No Other

13. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 13 Some Conclusions from ISV Input Developers really, really like seeing the standard improve regularly Well done everyone for the last several year’s worth of effort! We should keep up this pace Need continued investment in Working Groups Strong demand for significant short-term functionality – ideally in 2.0! Floating point textures and buffers Multiple render targets LOTS of developers are waiting for Superbuffers Must get finished ASAP! Need synch control / asynchronous vendor or EXT extensions 3Dlabs is willing to take the lead on these Build on Nvidia fence extension? Is Tesselation adequately addressed by the render-to-vertex-array? If not – we need a new vendor or EXT extension ASAP Khronos beginning work on binary format for pre-compiled shaders We should make sure we synchronize with this work?

14. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 14 Detailed Roadmap Target Functionality OpenGL 2.0 Core GLSL and supporting API Non-power of two Multiple render targets Point sprite ARB Extensions Superbuffers Pixel buffer objects Floating point textures/buffers Texture Rectangle OpenGL 2.1 Core GLSL updates Superbuffers Pixel buffer objects Floating point textures/buffers Texture Rectangle ARB Extensions Render-to-vertex-array (or other tessellation support) Synchronization Asynchronous upload/download Precompiled shaders Shader metafiles New version of WGL/GLX OpenGL 2.2 Core Render-to-vertex-array (or other tessellation support) Synchronization Asynchronous upload/download Precompiled shaders Shader metafiles ARB Extensions Programmable pixel packing/unpacking/transfer What next? 200420052006 Standardized High- Level Shading Language Standardized General- Purpose Computing on Graphics Hardware Standardized Multimedia Synchronization and Shader Interchange

15. © Copyright 3Dlabs 2004 Page 15 Simple High-level Roadmap Messaging 200420052006 OpenGL 2.0 OpenGL 2.1 OpenGL 2.2 Standardized High-Level Shading Language Standardized General- Purpose Computing on Graphics Hardware Standardized Multimedia Synchronization and Shader Interchange Nice Message! Can / should we execute?