GLslang required hardware?

I’m actually an intermediate newbie, but I wasn’t sure if the folks in the beginner forum would be able to answer this. :slight_smile:

What accelerators will GLslang support? Will it have to have a programmable chip like the GF4Ti or FX? Will the GF4MX be supported? Also, when will we see OS X and Linux versions? Thanks,

Robert

Given that the GF4MX doesn’t support neither vertex nor fragment program GLslang wouldn’t be very useful

At the moment I think the only card with some GLSlang support is 3DLabs P10 but I could be wrong. By the way it’s a High Level Shading Language so it’s not really useful for GF4 class hardware which is limited in its programability, it will be really interesting for programing NV3x or R3xx hardware whitch support hundreds of instructions.

OK, thanks. That answers my question.

Something strange is brewing at Ati. I’ve seen pics of ati’s 9800pro box and it advertizes Opengl 2.0 support. Perhaps it will support glslang.

Originally posted by Robert_Burns:
OK, thanks. That answers my question.

That would be surprising, since the ARB has not defined an OpenGL 2.0 yet.

Originally posted by JD:
Something strange is brewing at Ati. I’ve seen pics of ati’s 9800pro box and it advertizes Opengl 2.0 support. Perhaps it will support glslang.

HOO-YA!!

-SirKnight

It’s the 256meg variant which will be released soonish(probably will go head to head with nv35, I think r400 will go against nv40). Take a look for yourself at www.rage3d.com main page, just scroll down a bit.

Maybe ati’s f-buffer places the card under gl2 specs? On the topic of glslang I think Ati might be pretty close since they got major boost from their 3DLabs partnership. We do know that JC played with glslang on P10. Maybe we’ll get an early glslang implementation from Ati thru their extensions. That would be interesting to say the least.

Originally posted by JD:
Something strange is brewing at Ati. I’ve seen pics of ati’s 9800pro box and it advertizes Opengl 2.0 support. Perhaps it will support glslang.

Oyaah! I really hope it isnt any bogus and that it will have full GL2 support.

Thanks for the link!

Well they may feel able to say “OpenGL 2.0 ready” or some other such marketing claim given the flexibility of their hardware but Cass is obviously right, there is no OpenGL 2.0 there yet to support. There may never be a clear OpenGL 2.0 set as it was originally envisioned by 3D Labs.

I think it’s a fairly safe bet to assume that R300 series and GFFX series cards will have GL2 support once it comes around. Not everything will run in hardware, but for the most fairly simple shaders it will. R200 and GF3/4 which lack floating point support will most likely either support GL2 completely in software or not at all.

Originally posted by Robert_Burns:
[b]I’m actually an intermediate newbie, but I wasn’t sure if the folks in the beginner forum would be able to answer this. :slight_smile:

What accelerators will GLslang support? Will it have to have a programmable chip like the GF4Ti or FX? Will the GF4MX be supported? Also, when will we see OS X and Linux versions? Thanks,

Robert[/b]

Sounds like what you really’d benefit from is Cg rather than glslang. Particularly since Cg is available today.

The GeForce4 MX supports the NV_vertex_program and ARB_vertex_program extensions. You can use Cg to write vertex programs in a high-level language and then have the Cg compiler generate either style of assembly.

As for fragent-level shading, a GeForce4 MX doesn’t support the newer fragment program extensions. The new GeForce FX line of GPUs does however.

You mention Linux and MacOS X support. Cg runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X (though I don’t the MacOS X version is publically available yet).

If you want to learn more about Cg, get a copy of “The Cg Tutorial” (ISBN 0321194969) published by Addison-Wesley.

  • Mark