Shader Model and GLSL versions

March 10, 2012 Robert Graphics APIs, 0

When reading articles about graphics programming you come alone the term ‘Shader Model’ and version numbers for GLSL, OpenGL and Direct3D (depending on the API used in the article). While the described algorithms (nearly always) can be implemented in the ‘other’ API as well the different versioning schemes can be confusing – what OpenGL version and GLSL version do I need to implement this ‘Shader Model 4.0′ technique?

Note that you can’t always find an exact match for each version in the other API so take this chart with a grain of salt, its intension is to give you a rough overview of which API versions have a similar enough feature set to implement similar algorithms.

 

OpenGL	GLSL	Direct3D	Shader Model
2.1	120	9.0	2.0
3.3	330	10.0	4.0
4.2	420	11.0	5.0

 

The Shaders itself are also called differently (but serve the same purpose):

OpenGL	Direct3D
Vertex Shader	Vertex Shader
Tessellation Control Shader	Hull Shader
Tessellation Evaluation Shader	Domain Shader
Geometry Shader	Geometry Shader
Fragment Shader	Pixel Shader
Compute Shader	Compute Shader

 

Here’s a complete list of GLSL versions and the corresponding OpenGL versions (thank god the ARB changed the versioning scheme with OpenGL 3.3!):

OpenGL	#version	latest spec version number	Note
2.0		1.10.59
2.1	120	1.20.8
3.0	130	1.30.10
3.1	140	1.40.08
3.2	150	1.50.11	added Geometry Shaders
3.3	330	3.30.6
4.0	400	4.00.9	added both Tessellation Shaders
4.1	410	4.10.6
4.2	420	4.20.11
4.3	430	4.30.6	added Compute Shaders

Shaders in OpenGL were available even earlier thru extensions, early extensions were defined for OpenGL 1.3.

Also a more complete overview for Direct3D:

Direct3D	Shader Model	Note
8.0	1.0 – 1.3
8.1	1.4 (PS) / 1.1 (VS)
9.0	2.0
9.0c	3.0
10.0	4.0	added Geometry Shaders
10.1	4.1
11.0	5.0	added Domain & Hull Shaders

 

Update 8/6/12: added OpenGL 4.3

Direct3D, GLSL, OpenGL, Shader

GPU Rasterizer Pattern OpenGL ES 3.0