OpenGL and More Gaming

At one time, OpenGL (Open Graphics Library ) used to be the predominant API for 2D and 3D applications. OpenGL is a standard cross platform API for computer graphics originally developed by Silicon Graphics in 1992, featuring over 250 function calls. While OpenGL has been pushed somewhat into the back by DirectX powering most games in the Microsoft Windows environment, it remains a powerful factor in CAD and scientific computing. OpenGL is currently managed by a non-profit technology consortium known as the Khronos Group. OpenGL allows each vendor to add functions through extensions of the standard that are designated by specific identifiers (for example “NV” for nVidia).

An additional issue in this regard is the demand on Anti Aliasing procedures. There is no doubt that full-screen anti aliasing improves the perceived image quality by smoothing jagged edges and taking out the annoying crawling of diagonal lines, yet, strictly speaking, it is averaging of data points that may not be required or even desired in scientific or technical applications where any shifting of a line could have significant consequences on the interpretation and validity of data. At the same time, the supersampling and multisampling techniques used by commodity graphics cards manufacturers significantly increase the demand on the graphics memory buffer size since sub-pixels have to be taken into account. In a graphics configuration relying on any united memory architecture (UMA), this adds a tremendous amount of data traffic, thereby stressing the bandwidth limitations of a system memory bus, which, in comparison to the ultra-wide, ultra-high speed on-board memory interfaces on discrete graphics cards is extremely limited, even on Neahlem systems.