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by Loc Q Nguyen & Murali Madhanagopal

Introduction

In this paper, Intel Graphics refers to the Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (Intel® GMA) graphics core. Built into the chipset and integrated into the motherboard, the graphics core shares the system memory with the operating system to keep the system performance at a very low cost. Intel Graphics addresses a wide range of graphics usages in mainstream personal computers. Since it is integrated into the motherboard, Intel Graphics consumes much less power than a discrete graphics card does. It is however powerful enough to allow users to perform expensive 3D graphics processing. The goal of this document is to list the set of OpenGL Extensions supported in Intel® 4 Series Express Chipsets for a quick reference. Developers who write 3D applications on OpenGL may refer to this document for a complete list of extensions supported in an Intel chipset.

For Intel chipset naming convention, please refer to the whitepaper “Quick Reference Guide to Intel Graphics” [1].

Supported OpenGL Extensions

Intel® 4 Series Express Chipsets support OpenGL version 2.0 and some extensions from OpenGL 2.1 (Pixel Buffer Objects) and OpenGL 3.0 (Frame Buffer Objects, floating point textures and half float pixels).

The table below summarizes the OpenGL extensions supported by Intel® 4 Series Express Chipsets and future chipsets. A brief description of each extension is also included in the table for reference. For a full detailed description of these extensions, readers are encouraged to check OpenGL Extension Registry official website. [2].
Note that each extension consists of multiple words. These words are connected each other by underscores. The first word usually starts with GL (core OpenGL) or WGL for Win32 system dependent. The second word indicates the company that developed that extension (e.g., ARB for Architecture Review Board, EXT for Extensions agreed by multiple vendors, INTEL for Intel Corporation, etc). The following words (usually not with capital letters) indicate the extension name.

In the reference table, the first column specifies the extension; the second column provides a brief description of the extension; the third column shows the first driver version for Windows* XP/Vista that the extension is supported. For example, for the extension GL_ARB_point_sprite, the first version of driver in Windows XP* that supports this extension is 14.36; and the first version of driver in Windows Vista* that supports this extension is 15.11. Drivers will support all extensions supported by a previous version of the driver. All extensions supported in 15.11 will be supported by default in 15.14. Same is the case with Windows XP drivers, 14.38 will support all extensions supported by 14.36. Also, 14.x means all driver versions of Windows XP support the extension. 15. x means all Windows Vista driver versions support this extension.

API Support

GLSL Support

GLSL (Open GL Shading language) is high level shading language which enables user to use a C like programming language to control the graphics pipe line for vertex and fragment operations. GLSL supports C programming constructs like branches, loops, if-else, while, break and continue.

ARB Extensions

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Vendor and EXT Extensions

Pixel Buffer Object and Frame Buffer Object Support

OpenGL uses a pipelined architecture; each unit needs data from previous section to complete its job. The vertex data and pixel data are processed through the pipeline, combined and written to the frame buffer for display. Rasterization is the process which combines geometry and pixel data and writes as a fragment. Fragment is an object containing depth, width, color, points and other information necessary for display. Each fragment maps to a pixel in the screen. A frame buffer is a set of buffers containing color, depth, stencil and accumulation buffers. However this frame buffer is windows system provided and managed by the operating system.

Frame Buffer Object (FBO)

The GL_EXT_framebuffer_object extension defines an interface that allows rendering to one or more off screen frame buffers other than the default frame buffer provided to OGL by the operating system. The introduction of these newly defined rendering destinations, referred to as frame buffer-attachable images, provide the functionality that allows:

• Off screen rendering without the window’s size limitation
• Direct rendering to textures without the necessity to use glCopyTexImage()
• Rendering to multiple locations with the use of fragment shaders
• Rendering to the stencil and depth logical buffers with the use of the newly introduced renderbuffer object.

FBO is supported by Intel 4 series chipsets in Vista (15.11) and XP (14.36) graphics drivers.

Pixel Buffer Object (PBO)

Pixel Buffer Object expands vertex buffer object to store both vertex and pixel data. ARB_vertex_buffer_object is the extension to support vertex buffers. Vertex Buffer objects (VBO) are actually created, when a glBindBuffer() function is called for the first time for a given buffer name.
The 2 pixel path functions affected by PBO are:

• glDrawPixels() - draws pixels from PBO directly to the frame buffer
• glReadPixels() - Reads pixels directly from the frame buffer and write the data into PBO.

Two main groups of functions, affected by PBO are:

• glTexImage*D() – Used to transfer texture from the user memory to the OGL-managed memory
• glGetTexImage() – Used to transfer texture to the user memory

PBO introduces 2 new targets for binding buffer objects – GL_PIXEL_PACK_BUFFER_ARB and GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER_ARB. glReadPixels() and glGetTexImage() are pack pixel functions, whereas glDrawPixels() and glTexImage*D() are unpack operations.
PBO is supported by Intel® 4 Series Express Chipsets in Vista (15.11) and XP (14.36) graphics drivers.

Examples of Using OpenGL extensions

In this section, two examples show how OpenGL extensions can be used.

Using GL_EXT_abgr

The first example illustrates the use of the extension GL_EXT_abgr.

GL_EXT_abgr extends the list of color formats in order to fit big-endian machines. In this format, the pixel color data consists of four components: alpha, blue, green, red, and these components are stored in this order. The color of a pixel is the combination of blue, green and red. The alpha component is the degree of color transparency. Each component has a value between 0 and 255. The alpha value 0 means full transparency, 255 means opaque, and a value between 0 and 255 means some degree of transparency between full transparency and opaque.

A function, called CreateImages, is used to create four images which have ABGR format. The first image is a red square with a degree of transparency (0x80 in this example). The second image is a green square with the same degree of transparency. The third image is a blue square with the same degree of transparency. The last image is a brown square with the same degree of transparency; the brown color is a combination of green and red components.

The function called RenderScene is used to draw the above images. In this function, the API call glDrawPixels is used to render the images. Note that in glDrawPixels, the format GL_ABGR is used to draw the image.

The main program starts by checking whether or not the extension GL_EXT_abgr is supported in the current GPU. If it is not supported, the program simply exits; otherwise, it creates the above images in the ABGR formats and renders them.

If the graphics hardware supports GL_EXT_abgr, the result is shown in the picture below. The overlap sections of the four squares have different colors because of the transparency effect of the squares.

Using OpenGL shading language

In this section, we show an example of using OpenGL shading language.

The code below shows how the application uses the vertex shader and fragment shader. The source code of vertex and fragment shaders are first loaded with the API glShaderSourceARB, then they are compiled with glCompileShaderARB to create shader objects. These shader objects are attached to a program object called g_program. A program object is an OpenGL data structure object that contains all shader objects used a specific task. The compiled shader objects are then linked with glLinkProgramARB.

The function called RenderShadedCube is used to render a rotated cube in three dimensions. It defines the eight vertices of a cube. The cube has six square faces, and each face consists of four vertices. In each square face, four vertices have four different colors. The API call glUseProgramObjectARB tells the compiler to install a program object’s executable code.

The main program starts by checking the OpenGL version supported by the GPU. Since GLSL becomes part of OpenGL starting version 2.0, we can query the shading version if OpenGL version is greater or equal to 2.0. If the OpenGL version is 1.x then we may check the four extensions for GLSL which determines whether or not the current GPU can run GLSL or not. If GLSL is not supported, the program simply exits; otherwise, it renders the rotated cube using the predifined vertex and grament shaders.

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Finally, the source code of the vertex shader is shown below. Note that it is written in OpenGL shading language, a high-level procedural language.

Similarly, the source code of the fragment shader is shown below.

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We ran this program on a computer equipped with the Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset. A rotated cube is rendered as the result. Note that the shading color on each cube face is the result from the shaders.

Conclusion

Today, Intel Graphics represents a large volume of deployed graphics hardware in the consumer graphics market segment. Since the number of OpenGL applications continues to grow, this article serves as a quick reference for developers who implement OpenGL applications on Intel® 4 Series Express Chipsets. Intel also offers tools to help developers to optimize their applications for Intel® Graphics Technology such as Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer [3], Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers [4], Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator Driver [5], etc.

References

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1. Quick Reference Guide To Intel Integrated Graphics

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About the Authors

Loc Q Nguyen received his M.B.A. from the University of Dallas, Texas. He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University, Canada and a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from École Polytechnique, Université de Montréal, Canada. He is currently an Application Engineer with Software and Services Group at Intel Corporation.

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Murali Madhanagopalreceived his M.S. in Computer Information Systems from Texas A&M University, College Station and his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from College Of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, India. He is currently a Graphics Architect with Visual Computing Group at Intel Corporation; working with ISV’s to enable Intel graphics features on their products.

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