The Khronos Group today announced the immediate release of the OpenGL 4.4 specification and the availability of the OpenCL 2.0 spec, bringing the latest graphics functionality to the widely adopted cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API (application programming interface). OpenGL 4.4 defines new functionality to streamline the porting of applications and titles from other platforms and APIs, in addition to maintaining full backwards compatibility with older specifications.
In addition to the OpenGL 4.4 specification, the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) Working Group at Khronos has created the first set of formal OpenGL conformance tests since OpenGL 2.0. Khronos will offer certification of drivers from version 3.3, and full certification is mandatory for OpenGL 4.4 and onwards. This will help reduce differences between multiple vendors’ OpenGL drivers, resulting in enhanced portability for developers.
New OpenGL 4.4 functionality includes better buffer management, Detailed control over placement of shader interface variables, improved object binding, and streamlined porting of Direct3D applications.
Also released today is OpenCL 2.0. OpenCL 2.0 is a significant evolution of the open, royalty-free standard that is designed to further simplify cross-platform, parallel programming while enabling a wider range of algorithms and programming patterns to be easily hardware accelerated. The release of the specification in provisional form is to enable developers and implementers to provide feedback before specification finalization, which is expected within 6 months.
