Next-Gen OpenGL To Be Announced Next Month

The Khronos Group has shared details about their BoF sessions to be hosted next month during SIGGRAPH and it includes detailing the next-generation OpenGL / OpenGL ES specifications.

The next SIGGRAPH is in August in Vancouver (Canada) and there's a total of seven tracks during this important graphics conference where Khronos is to be involved. The Khronos BoFs were publicized today on Khronos.org.

Perhaps the most interesting BoF to Phoronix readers will be their OpenGL (OpenGL ES) BoF where the next GL standard is to be announced. The description reads, "Hear how OpenGL ES and OpenGL are evolving to meet the needs of next-generation 3D applications, providing lower overhead and greater graphics richness on mobile and desktop platforms."

Hearing about "lover overhead OpenGL" is hardly a surprise given it's been an increasing focus amongst game developers and hardware vendors. Microsoft DirectX 12 will focus on lower-overhead, Apple's Metal API is about low-overhead, and it's the main focus of AMD's Mantle API. Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD have all been investing in lowering the driver overhead for OpenGL.

Given that this next GL revision is expected to be major, the version bump will probably take it to become OpenGL 5.0 rather than OpenGL 4.5. The OpenGL 4.4 specification is now one year old (generally OpenGL revisions get announced every 6~12 months) while on the mobile/embedded side OpenGL ES 3.1 is just a few months old but perhaps if a major overhaul lands there immediately it will become OpenGL ES 4.0.

Details on the new OpenGL / OpenGL ES at the SIGGRAPH BoF are taking place on the evening of 13 August. Khronos will also be talking at SIGGRAPH Vancouver about WebGL, WebCL, OpenCL, SPIR, SYCL, and their other royalty-free industry standards.