Cg and ATI? Is this going to be 3DFX all over again?

[Spiffae]

Pardon my rudimentary knowlege of these issues, but here is what i understand: nVidia announced Cg a while ago, which is essentially a "C" type programming language for writing pixel shaders. Cg works in OpenGL (not sure about this, help me out) and is Pixel Shader 1.0 compatible. Then with DirectX9, Pixel Shader 2.0 came out, and 2.0 is not compatible with 1.0. Is that right? is Cg good for any Pixel Shader version? I'm confused.
Here is my question. Now, if Cg is a language developed by nVidia, is it proprietary to their hardware? Can Cg instructions be read by other chipsets (the R300 comes to mind) Does ATI have their own language?
If nVidia only supports Cg with their cards, that would be a disaster, much like when many games only supported software or glide. Also, if Cg was only nVidia, it would seem that a lot of programmers wouldn't use it. anybody know?
thanks

 

[Sxotty]

No cg is not proprietary, think about how C++ works, you type some code, and the compiler makes it work in assembly language. Cg is however optimized for their products, but a company (like ATI) can easily write a front end for it that will compile an optimized version for ATI cards. I think mainly its a pissing contest. B/c all the HLS programming languages look decent to me

 

[Slappy00]

werd what sxotty said