OpenGL 4.0 further improves the close interoperability with OpenCL for accelerating computationally intensive visual applications. OpenGL 4.0 also continues support for both the Core and Compatibility profiles first introduced with OpenGL 3.2, enabling developers to use a streamlined API or retain backwards compatibility for existing OpenGL code, depending on their market needs.
OpenGL 4.0 has been specifically designed to bring significant benefits to application developers, including:
two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU;
per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions for increased rendering quality and anti-aliasing flexibility;
drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention;
shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility;
separation of texture state and texture data through the addition of a new object type called sampler objects;
64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality;
performance improvements, including instanced geometry shaders, instanced arrays, and a new timer query.
Lastly, Khronos has simultaneously released an OpenGL 3.3 specification, together with a set of ARB extensions, to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous generation GPU hardware; providing maximum flexibility and platform coverage for application developers.
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