EGL (API)

Last updated
EGL (OpenGL)
EGL OpenGL Logo.svg
Original author(s) Khronos Group
Developer(s) Khronos Group
Stable release
1.5 [1] / March 19, 2014;8 years ago (2014-03-19)
Written in C
Operating system Cross-platform
Platform Cross-platform
Type API
Website www.khronos.org

EGL is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs (such as OpenGL, OpenGL ES or OpenVG) and the underlying native platform windowing system. EGL handles graphics context management, surface/buffer binding, rendering synchronization, and enables "high-performance, accelerated, mixed-mode 2D and 3D rendering using other Khronos APIs." [2] EGL is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.

Contents

The acronym EGL is an initialism, which starting from EGL version 1.2 refers to Khronos Native Platform Graphics Interface. [3] Prior to version 1.2, the name of the EGL specification was OpenGL ES Native Platform Graphics Interface. [4] X.Org development documentation glossary defines EGL as "Embedded-System Graphics Library". [5]

Adoption

As an interface between OpenGL ES or OpenVG and the underlying windowing system, EGL has found wide adoption
The Linux Graphics Stack and glamor.svg
Wayland clients use EGL to directly draw into the framebuffer. The display server sits between the kernel (here: Linux kernel ) and its clients. It communicates with its clients over a given protocol.
Wayland display server protocol.svg
The free implementations of the Wayland (display server protocol) rely upon the Mesa implementation of EGL. A special library called libwayland-EGL was written to accommodate the access to the framebuffer

Implementations

See also

Related Research Articles

OpenGL Cross-platform graphics API

OpenGL is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

Windowing system Software that manages separately different parts of display screens

In computing, a windowing system is software that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP paradigm for a user interface.

GLX is an extension to the X Window System core protocol providing an interface between OpenGL and the X Window System as well as extensions to OpenGL itself. It enables programs wishing to use OpenGL to do so within a window provided by the X Window System. GLX distinguishes two "states": indirect state and direct state.

Direct3D and OpenGL are competing application programming interfaces (APIs) which can be used in applications to render 2D and 3D computer graphics. As of 2005, graphics processing units (GPUs) almost always implement one version of both of these APIs. Examples include: DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2 circa 2004; DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3 circa 2008; and most recently, DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 circa 2011. GPUs that support more recent versions of the standards are backwards compatible with applications that use the older standards; for example, one can run older DirectX 9 games on a more recent DirectX 11-certified GPU.

OpenVG is an API designed for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. Its primary platforms are mobile phones, gaming & media consoles and consumer electronic devices. It was designed to help manufacturers create more attractive user interfaces by offloading computationally intensive graphics processing from the CPU onto a GPU to save energy. The OpenGL ES library provides similar functionality for 3D graphics. OpenVG is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.

The Khronos Group, Inc. is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of 170 organizations developing, publishing and maintaining royalty-free interoperability standards for 3D graphics, virtual reality, augmented reality, parallel computation, vision acceleration and machine learning. The open standards and associated conformance tests enable software applications and middleware to effectively harness authoring and accelerated playback of dynamic media across a wide variety of platforms and devices. The group is based in Beaverton, Oregon.

Direct Rendering Infrastructure Framework

The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) is the framework comprising the modern Linux graphics stack which allows unprivileged user-space programs to issue commands to graphics hardware without conflicting with other programs. The main use of DRI is to provide hardware acceleration for the Mesa implementation of OpenGL. DRI has also been adapted to provide OpenGL acceleration on a framebuffer console without a display server running.

OpenGL ES Subset of the OpenGL API for embedded systems

OpenGL for Embedded Systems is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerated using a graphics processing unit (GPU). It is designed for embedded systems like smartphones, tablet computers, video game consoles and PDAs. OpenGL ES is the "most widely deployed 3D graphics API in history".

Java OpenGL

Java OpenGL (JOGL) is a wrapper library that allows OpenGL to be used in the Java programming language. It was originally developed by Kenneth Bradley Russell and Christopher John Kline, and was further developed by the Sun Microsystems Game Technology Group. Since 2010, it has been an independent open-source project under a BSD license. It is the reference implementation for Java Bindings for OpenGL (JSR-231).

Mesa, also called Mesa3D and The Mesa 3D Graphics Library, is an open source implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics API specifications. Mesa translates these specifications to vendor-specific graphics hardware drivers.

Xgl Display server implementation

Xgl is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X Window System protocol designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects by a compositing window manager such as Compiz or Beryl. The project was started by David Reveman of Novell and first released on January 2, 2006. It was removed from the X.org server in favor of AIGLX on June 12, 2008.

AIGLX Open source project

Accelerated Indirect GLX ("AIGLX") is an open source project founded by Red Hat and the Fedora community, led by Kristian Høgsberg, to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to the X.Org Server and DRI drivers. This allows remote X clients to get fully hardware accelerated rendering over the GLX protocol; coincidentally, this development was required for OpenGL compositing window managers to function with hardware acceleration.

Core OpenGL, or CGL, is Apple Inc.'s Macintosh Quartz windowing system interface to the OS X implementation of the OpenGL specification. CGL is analogous to GLX, which is the X11 interface to OpenGL, as well as WGL, which is the Microsoft Windows interface to OpenGL.

MiniGLX is a specification for an application programming interface which facilitates OpenGL rendering on systems without windowing systems, e.g. Linux without an X Window System or embedded systems without a windowing system. The interface is a subset of the GLX interface, plus a minimal set of Xlib-like functions.

WGL or Wiggle is an API between OpenGL and the windowing system interface of Windows. WGL is analogous to EGL, which is an interface between rendering APIs such as OpenCL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES or OpenVG and the native platform, as well as to CGL, which is the OS X interface to OpenGL.

Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit (GPU). It is implemented by the free and open-source library libva, combined with a hardware-specific driver, usually provided together with the GPU driver.

Wayland (display server protocol) Display system intended to replace X11

Wayland is a communication protocol that specifies the communication between a display server and its clients, as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. A display server using the Wayland protocol is called a Wayland compositor, because it additionally performs the task of a compositing window manager.

Pixel buffer or pBuffer is a feature in OpenGL and OpenGL ES platform interfaces which allows for off-screen rendering. It is specified as an extension to WGL API, and a core feature of GLX & EGL.

ANGLE is an open source, cross-platform graphics engine abstraction layer developed by Google. ANGLE translates OpenGL ES 2/3 calls to DirectX 9, 11, OpenGL or Vulkan API calls. It's a portable version of OpenGL but with limitations of OpenGL ES standard.

Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more efficient CPU and GPU usage compared to older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs. It provides a considerably lower-level API for the application than the older APIs, making Vulkan comparable to Apple's Metal API and Microsoft's Direct3D 12. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores.

References

  1. "Khronos releases EGL 1.5 specification". Khronos Group. 2014-03-19. Retrieved 2014-03-20.
  2. EGL Overview
  3. EGL 1.2 Specification
  4. EGL 1.0 Specification
  5. EGL in X.Org development documentation glossary
  6. "Developer Guide". Archived from the original on 2013-10-10. Retrieved 2014-05-28.
  7. "Gingerbread".
  8. "Pekka Paalanen: What does EGL do in the Wayland stack". 10 March 2012.
  9. Mesa EGL
  10. "MirSpec". Archived from the original on 2013-03-06. Retrieved 2013-03-07.
  11. http://elinux.org/RPi_VideoCore_APIs
  12. "Added support for the EGL API on 32-bit platforms. Currently, the supported client APIs are OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0, and the only supported window system backend is X11". 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  13. "Porting Guide/Graphics and UI - Tizen Wiki".