NVIDIA Posts New OpenGL Extensions For Multi-GPU Rendering
Three new extensions were posted this morning by NVIDIA engineers that are pending acceptance into the OpenGL registry: GL_NVX_gpu_multicast2, GL_NVX_progress_fence, and WGL_NV_multigpu_context. The latter is a Windows focused extension while the other two are tailored to multi-GPU rendering and not WGL-specific.
GL_NVX_gpu_multicast2 - The GL_NVX_gpu_multicast2 extension builds on the existing NV_gpu_multicast extension that is about exposing multi-GPU rendering with explicit application controls over multiple graphics processors from a single OpenGL context. Multicast2 brings new functionality for this multi-cast rendering for async copy image and async copy buffer and other new features.
NVX_progress_fence - The NVIDIA experimental progress fence extension is for better coordinating operations between multiple GPU command streams and builds upon OpenGL's existing semaphores and progress fence concepts.
WGL_NV_multigpu_context - This WGL-catered extension is for creating OpenGL contexts in a multi-GPU environment and specifying the SLI mode / distributed rendering technique. It's Windows-specific for now as it's touching platform dependent areas but hopefully NVIDIA will be coming wit similar GLX/EGL extensions.
These pending NVIDIA Multicast2 GL extensions can be viewed on GitHub. It will be interesting to see if this is timed for a SIGGRAPH announcement next week or purely coincidental.
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