What is GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counters?

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
1

Hi,

Does anybody know anything about the extension GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counters that ships with the latest releases of Catalyst?

I suppose it is some addition to GLSL to support access to atomic counters that can be used for communication between parallel shaders and uses the atomic read-modify-write possibility currently on the latest GPUs. However, maybe I’m completely wrong.

Unfortunately there is nothing about it in the extension registry and googling around didn’t help as well. As I know it was present in earlier drivers as GL_EXT_shader_atomic_counters but didn’t find anything about that either.

2

you are correct that this extension is to allow multiple elements to access a global counter (which you can increment/decrement).

it has not been approved as an ARB extension (yet?), and the string you are seeing is a typo.

3

Thanks!

It would be great to have some spec about it as I have already plenty of ideas how to take advantage of it :stuck_out_tongue:

Is there any official or non-official spec out there about the extension?