3D Programming
The ATI Radeon™ represents ATI's first entry into the world of hardware transformation and lighting. As such, the Radeon™ Transformation Pipeline document illustrates this in great detail and is a key part of the SDK. Every pixel that is drawn on the screen passes through the Radeon™ 3D Pixel Pipeline. Naturally, an intimate understanding of both of these pipelines is central to getting the most out of any modern 3D graphics accelerator. These two documents are the focal point of the Radeon™ SDK.
For general optimization strategies, check out the Designing for Radeon™ doc for tips on maintaining high levels of concurrency and thus total system throughput.
OpenGL® Extensions
The Radeon™ supports a variety of OpenGL® extensions on Windows® and Mac®OS. For an explanation of using OpenGL® extensions and complete list of all extensions, please refer to the OpenGL® Extension Registry. We have also created a pdf containing all of the ATI supported extensions and their specs for your convenience, download here.
The tokens and prototypes required to utilize these extensions are found in the glATI.h and wglATI.h headers, which you can feel free to use in your own applications.
A header and library to easily set up these extensions within your OpenGL application is avaliable here: extSetupLib.zip. Source for this library along with a Visual C++ 6.0 project is also avaliable: extSetupSrc.zip
OpenGL SDK
This SDK release is intended to support the GL driver for Radeon 9500 and above. Samples included are Simple_Shader, Mandelbrot, and HW_Image_Processing. Simple_Shader provides a simple environment for learning how to write a fragment and vertex shaders.
Mandelbrot shows how to use floating point pbuffers to perform multipass shading for extremely long/complex shaders. HW_Image_Processing is a more complex sample that shows how fragment programs can be used in combination with render to texture and high precision image formats to accomplish image processing on a graphics processor.
The Radeon 9700 OpenGL Programming and Optimization Guide is also included with the SDK.
Download ATI OpenGL SDK.
The Meaning of ATIX
Extensions which begin with the prefix ATIX are experimental extensions. This means that they are not necessarily in their final state and are subject to change. You are free to experiment with them, but you should not ship content to your users which relies upon an ATIX extension. If you are shipping content and are in need of a final specification, contact us at Radeon SDK Support.
On the Radeon™ , supported extensions including the following:
Vertex Pipe
Pixel Pipe
Blending / Texturing
Pixel Packing
Miscellaneous
Windowing / WGL