Khronos Group Launches OpenGL 4.6 Adopters Program

The Khronos Group has launched an OpenGL 4.6 Adopters Program with a significantly enhanced conformance test suite in open source.

OpenGL 4.6 Progress

The latest moves by the Khronos Group are aimed at getting implementations to become officially conformant to the latest generation of OpenGL specification. The new test suite is released in open source and placed on GitHub to enable industry participation in testing and ongoing conformance test suite improvements. The open source nature of the test suite should significantly aid in the improvement of the test suite by the OpenGL 3D industry.

“Khronos was proud to release OpenGL 4.6 while celebrating the standard’s 25th anniversary over the summer,” says Piers Daniell, OpenGL Working Group chair at Khronos and principal engineer at NVIDIA. “Since then, an enormous amount of work has gone into enhancing the associated conformance tests.”

01 – The Khronos Group has updated the industry-standard graphics API to OpenGL 4.6 with a new open source Test Suite now in GitHub. 

“The new test suite makes adoption smoother for API implementers, and enables developers to benefit from the reliable availability of the new features and improvements made in the latest iteration of the OpenGL standard,” says Daniell. “The Khronos OpenGL Working Group is committed to support and enhance this vital industry standard as its availability forges ahead into in its second quarter century.”

Khronos members Intel and NVIDIA have already successfully made submissions to the OpenGL 4.6 Adopters Program, showcasing reliable cross-vendor operation, and enabling the submitted products to become officially conformant. Information on all OpenGL conformant products can be found on the Khronos Conformant Product Registry.

Any company, whether or not a Khronos member, is welcome to become an OpenGL 4.6 adopter and submit conformance test results for OpenGL Working Group review and approval. Those who pass certification will be able to use the royalty-free OpenGL trademark and gain protection under the Khronos Intellectual Property Framework.

About OpenGL 4.6

OpenGL is the most widely adopted 2D and 3D graphics API in the industry, leveraged by software developers to create high-performance, visually compelling graphics software applications for a wide variety of platforms including PCs, workstations, and supercomputers. OpenGL provides flexibility through being network-transparent, as well as window-system and operating-system independent. It is deployed across CAD, energy, manufacturing, game development, content creation, architecture, virtual reality, and medical markets.

The latest iteration of OpenGL includes added functionality through ARB extensions, such as SPIR-V support, reduced driver overhead, enhanced support for Direct3D compatibility, improved visual quality of textured scenes, and reduced CPU overhead associated with rendering batches of geometry. More information about OpenGL 4.6 can be found at the Khronos OpenGL information page.