21-02-2009, 10:46 PM
ATI™s new SMARTSHADER„¢ technology allows developers of 3D
games and other applications to unleash their creativity with a fully
programmable graphics pipeline for both geometry processing and
rendering. Vertex shaders enable custom transform and lighting effects,
giving complete control over the shape and position of 3D characters,
objects, and environments. Pixel shaders enable a huge number of
different per-pixel effects, allowing accurate simulations of the
natural properties of materials such as hair, cloth, metal, glass, and
water that were previously difficult to achieve in real-time
applications. Important visual cues such as reflections, highlights,
and shadows from multiple light sources can also be rendered with
unprecedented speed and accuracy. Both pixel and vertex shaders are
accessible using the DirectX® 8.1 API from Microsoft as well as
OpenGL® extensions from ATI.
SMARTSHADER„¢ technology takes a major step beyond existing
hardware shader implementations with support for up to six textures per
rendering pass, nearly double the number of instructions, and a new and
improved shading language that provides greater flexibility and ease of
use. These advancements greatly increase the number of graphical
effects that can be created, improve performance by conserving memory
bandwidth, and allow more games and other applications to take
advantage of the technology. With SMARTSHADER„¢ technology, the
pace of graphical innovation will accelerate, and the gap in visual
quality between what has been seen in movies and what appears on the
computer screen will become narrower than ever before.
