Today saw two newsworthy developments in the consumer graphics world, one signifying an attempt to pave a unique path into the future, and another signifying an attempt to play a little catch-up. First up is NVIDIA’s new "Cg" 3D programming language.Cgis pitched as a high-level graphics programming language with compiler support for both OpenGL and DirectX. Notably, the language was developed in collaboration with Microsoft, although NVIDIA is saying that the basic code languagewill be available and customizableto other graphics chip manufacturers. According tothis report at CG Channel:
Writing code for existing Pixel and Vertex Shaders is akin to writing assembly code. Eventually it’ll work but it’s a laborious, low-level exercise with almost no comprehensibility if someone else works on the code. Enter Cg, a high-level "C"-like language that will provide greater accessibility to the tricky bit twiddling.
Putting on my speculative hat, the motivation is to drive hardware sales by increasing the prevalence of Pixel and Vertex Shader-enabled applications and gaming titles. This would be accomplished by creating a forward-compatible tool for developers to fully utilize the advanced features of current GPUs, and future GPUs/VPUs.
While this maybe isn’tGlide II, the Return, it’s a curious move that almost certainly means that, no matter who has access to the basic code language, only NVIDIA knows where the technology is going, and how it really works.
