Introduction: the article does not have any technical content, all is the search scissors stick over, figure a music is; The overall search starts with webGL and works its way through recommendations

Content subject:

  • OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) : a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface for rendering 2D, 3D vector graphics

The OpenGL specification is maintained by the OpenGL Architecture Review Committee (ARB), established in 1992. The ARB is made up of companies with a particular interest in creating a unified, universally available API. According to the OpenGL website, The June 2002 ARB voting members included 3Dlabs, Apple Computer, ATI Technologies, Dell Computer, Evans & Sutherland, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Matrox, NVIDIA, SGI, and Sun Microsystems. Microsoft was a founding member, but withdrew in March 2003.

  • DirectX: Microsoft’s new drawing capabilities and high-end coloring language in 2002 suppressed OpenGL1.0 (Microsoft platform only), then OpenGL began development of 2.0 (released in 2004)

It is widely used for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox video game development and only supports those platforms. In addition to game development, DirectX is also used to develop many virtual 3d graphics related software.

  • OpenGL ES: it is a subset of OpenGL. It is designed for mobile phones, PDAs, game consoles and other embedded devices (the first version (2003) was tailored and customized based on OpenGL1.3), and Khronos Group organized definition and promotion

  • OpenCL (Open Computing Language) : Originally written by Apple and donated to the Khronos Group, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), first released in 2009, extends the power of GPU graphics generation, regardless of graphics rendering

  • WebCL: Khronos Group’s first opencL-based Web extension for 2011 (no browser support at present)

  • WebGL: Origin Mozilla, Khronos Group design and maintenance. The first release in 2011 is a Web graphics library based on OpenGL ES 2.0, which provides the possibility to display 3D graphics on the Web. The API can be used in the HTML5 Canvas element. This consistency allows the API to take advantage of hardware graphics acceleration provided by the user device.

  • Mantle: 13 years led by AMD, mainly used for PC, 14 years donated to Khronos Group to help standardize and make it become the industry standard like OpenGL

  • Metal: launched in 2014 by apple (IOS8 only), it is similar to combining OpenGL and OpenCL functions on the same API. It can improve the rendering performance of 3D images by 10 times, and can fully leverage the performance of a-series chips.

  • Vulkan: The Khronos Group released a full-platform real-time 3D graphics program in 2015 (OpenGL has stopped developing and is focused on promoting Vulkan). OpenCL will integrate Vulkan in the future

  • WebGPU: Is a draft proposal for a new open source graphics API standard for the World Wide Web (W3C) proposed by Apple in 2017. The design is based on Metal, Vulkan, D3D12. There are currently three sets of proposals under discussion (Google’s Dawn, Mozilla’s Obsidian, And Apple’s WebMetal). Push their own Metal】

WebGPU is not related to WebGL and does not explicitly target OpenGL ES

Feeling:

It’s a constant battle of abstractions, technological innovation and unification that leads to greater prosperity. Hopefully, unification will make the Web even cooler.

Reference:

  1. OpenG

  2. DirectX

  3. OpenGL ES

  4. OpenCL

  5. WebCL

  6. WebGL

  7. WebGPU Learning (I) : Introduction

  8. Mantle

  9. Vulkan

  10. WebGPU

  11. Status and prospect of next generation Web graphics interface