Recent graphics hardware has become extremely powerful and a strong desire to harness this power for work (both graphics and non-graphics) that does not fit the traditional graphics pipeline well has emerged. To address this, this extension adds a new single-stage program type known as a compute program. This program may contain one or more compute shaders which may be launched in a manner that is essentially stateless. This allows arbitrary workloads to be sent to the graphics hardware with minimal disturbance to the GL state machine.
In most respects, a compute program is identical to a traditional OpenGL program object, with similar status, uniforms, and other such properties. It has access to many of the same resources as fragment and other shader types, such as textures, image variables, atomic counters, and so on. However, it has no predefined inputs nor any fixed-function outputs. It cannot be part of a pipeline and its visible side effects are through its actions on images and atomic counters.
OpenCL is another solution for using graphics processors as generalized compute devices. This extension addresses a different need. For example, OpenCL is designed to be usable on a wide range of devices ranging from CPUs, GPUs, and DSPs through to FPGAs. While one could implement GL on these types of devices, the target here is clearly GPUs. Another difference is that OpenCL is more full featured and includes features such as multiple devices, asynchronous queues and strict IEEE semantics for floating point operations. This extension follows the semantics of OpenGL - implicitly synchronous, in-order operation with single-device, single queue logical architecture and somewhat more relaxed numerical precision requirements. Although not as feature rich, this extension offers several advantages for applications that can tolerate the omission of these features. Compute shaders are written in GLSL, for example and so code may be shared between compute and other shader types. Objects are created and owned by the same context as the rest of the GL, and therefore no interoperability API is required and objects may be freely used by both compute and graphics simultaneously without acquire-release semantics or object type translation.
Requires OpenGL 4.. Promoted to core in OpenGL 4..
| Modifier and Type | Field and Description |
|---|---|
| public static final int | GL_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFER_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_COMPUTE_SHADER
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_COMPUTE_SHADER_BIT
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER_BINDING
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMBINED_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFERS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTERS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_IMAGE_UNIFORMS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_SHARED_MEMORY_SIZE
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_BLOCKS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_COUNT
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_INVOCATIONS
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE
Accepted by the |
| public static final int | GL_UNIFORM_BLOCK_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER
Accepted by the |
| Access | Constructor and Description |
|---|---|
| protected |
| Modifier and Type | Method and Description |
|---|---|
| public static void | glDispatchCompute(int
the number of work groups to be launched in the X dimension num_groups_x, int the number of work groups to be launched in the Y dimension num_groups_y, int the number of work groups to be launched in the Z dimension num_groups_z)Launches one or more compute work groups. |
| public static void | glDispatchComputeIndirect(long
the offset into the buffer object currently bound to the indirect)DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER buffer target at which the dispatch parameters are
stored.Launches one or more compute work groups using parameters stored in a buffer. |
| GL_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFER_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFER_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER Accepted by the | |
| GL_COMPUTE_SHADER | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_COMPUTE_SHADER Accepted by the | |
| GL_COMPUTE_SHADER_BIT | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_COMPUTE_SHADER_BIT Accepted by the | |
| GL_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE Accepted by the | |
| GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER Accepted by the | |
| GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER_BINDING | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_DISPATCH_INDIRECT_BUFFER_BINDING Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMBINED_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMBINED_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFERS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTER_BUFFERS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTERS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_ATOMIC_COUNTERS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_IMAGE_UNIFORMS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_IMAGE_UNIFORMS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_SHARED_MEMORY_SIZE | back to summary |
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| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_SHARED_MEMORY_SIZE Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_BLOCKS | back to summary |
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| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_BLOCKS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_COUNT | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_COUNT Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_INVOCATIONS | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_INVOCATIONS Accepted by the | |
| GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_MAX_COMPUTE_WORK_GROUP_SIZE Accepted by the | |
| GL_UNIFORM_BLOCK_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static final int GL_UNIFORM_BLOCK_REFERENCED_BY_COMPUTE_SHADER Accepted by the | |
| ARBComputeShader | back to summary |
|---|---|
| protected ARBComputeShader() | |
| glDispatchCompute | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static void glDispatchCompute(int num_groups_x, int num_groups_y, int num_groups_z) Launches one or more compute work groups.
| |
| glDispatchComputeIndirect | back to summary |
|---|---|
| public static void glDispatchComputeIndirect(long indirect) Launches one or more compute work groups using parameters stored in a buffer. The parameters addressed by indirect are packed a structure, which takes the form (in C):
A call to
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