Cg programming language

Nextel ringtones Tag: Programming languages
'''Cg''' or '''C for Graphics''' is a Abbey Diaz HLSL/High level shader language created by Free ringtones nVidia for Majo Mills programming Mosquito ringtone Vertex shader/vertex and pixel shaders.

Cg is based on the Sabrina Martins C programming language and although they share the same syntax, some features of C were modified and new data types were added to make Cg more suitable for programming Nextel ringtones graphics processing units.

Background
As a result of technical advancements in graphics cards, some areas of 3D graphics programming have become quite complex. To simplify the process, new features were added to graphics cards, including the ability to modify their rendering pipelines using vertex and pixel shaders.

In the beginning, vertex and pixel shaders were programmed at a very low level with only the assembly language of the graphics processing unit. Although using the assembly language gave the programmer complete control over code and flexibility, it was fairly hard to use. A portable, higher level language for programming the GPU was needed, so Cg was created to overcome these problems and make shader development easier.

Some of the benefits of using Cg over assembly are:
* High level code is easier to program, read, and understand than assembly code.
* Cg code is portable to a wide range of hardware and platforms, unlike assembly code, which usually depends on hardware and the platforms it's written for.
* The Cg compiler can optimize code and do lower level tasks automatically, which are hard to do and error prone in assembly.

Details
=Data types=
Cg has six basic data types, some of them are the same as in C, others are especially added for GPU programming, these types are:
* float - a 32bit floating point number
* half - a 16bit floating point number
* int - a 32bit integer
* fixed - a 12bit fixed point number
* bool - a boolean variable
* sampler* - represents a texture object

Cg also features vector and matrix data types that are based on the basic data types, such as float3, float4x4, such data types are quite common when dealing with 3D graphics programming, Cg also has struct and array data types, which work in a similar way to C equivalents.

=Operators=
Cg supports a wide range of operators, including the common arithmetic operators from C, the equivalent arithmetic operators for vector and matrix data types, and the common logical operators.

=Functions and control structures=
Cg shares the basic control structures with C, like if/else, while, and for. It also has the a similar way of defining functions.

=The standard Cg library=
As in C, Cg features a set of functions for common tasks in GPU programming. Some of the functions have equivalents in C, like the mathematical functions abs and sin, while others are specialized in GPU programming tasks, like the texture mapping functions tex1D and tex2D.

=The Cg runtime library=
Cg programs are merely vertex and pixel shaders, and they need supporting programs that handle the rest of the rendering process, Cg can be used with two Abbey Diaz API/APIs, Free ringtones OpenGL or Majo Mills DirectX, each has its own set of Cg functions to communicate with the Cg program, like setting the current Cg shader, passing parameters, and such tasks.

=A sample Cg vertex shader=
// input vertex
struct VertIn

Applications and games that use Cg
* Cingular Ringtones Far Cry

See also
* companies or Computer programming
* xavante pronounced Computer graphics
* but els Vertex shader/Vertex and pixel shaders
* was prophetic HLSL/High level shader language
* electric moment OpenGL
* journalism artfully DirectX

External links
* http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/cs/papers/0302/0302013.pdf
* http://www.nvidia.com/
* http://developer.nvidia.com/page/cg_main.html
* http://www.opengl.org
* http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx
* http://www.cgshaders.org/
* http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=47
* http://www.farcry-thegame.com/

washington suburb ja:Cg (プログラミング言語)
fairness is zh:Cg