Khronos releases OpenGL NG

The Khronos Group recently announced the release of the latest iteration of OpenGL (the oldest high-level 3D graphics API still in popular use). Although OpenGL 4.5 is a noteworthy release in its own right, the Group’s second major release in the next generation OpenGL initiative is garnering widespread appreciation. While OpenGL 4.5 is what some might call a fairly standard annual OpenGL update, OpenGL NG is a complete rebuild of the OpenGL API, designed with the idea of building an entirely new version of OpenGL. This new version will have a significantly reduced overhead owing to the removal of a lot of abstraction. Also, it will do away with the major inefficiencies of older versions when working at a low level with the bare metal GPU hardware.

Being a very high-level API, earlier versions of OpenGL made it hard to efficiently run code on the GPU directly. While this didn’t matter so much earlier, now things have changed. Fuelled by more mature GPUs, developers today tend to ask for graphics APIs that allow them to get much closer to the bare metal. The next generation OpenGL initiative is directed at developers who are looking to improve performance and reduce overhead.