This paper presents Glift, an abstraction and generic template library for defining complex, random-access graphics processor (GPU) data structures. Like modern CPU data structure libraries, Glift enables GPU programmers to separate algorithms from data structure definitions; thereby greatly simplifying algorithmic development and enabling reusable and interchangeable data structures. We characterize a large body of previously published GPU data structures in terms of our abstraction and present several new GPU data structures. The structures, a stack, quadtree, and octree, are explained using simple Glift concepts and implemented using reusable Glift components. We also describe two applications of these structures not previously demonstrated on GPUs: adaptive shadow maps and octree 3D paint. Lastly, we show that our example Glift data structures perform comparably to handwritten implementations while requiring only a fraction of the programming effort. (Glift: Generic, Efficient, Random-Access GPU Data Structures. Aaron E. Lefohn, Joe Kniss, Robert Strzodka, Shubhabrata Sengupta, John D. Owens. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 25(1), Jan. 2006.)

gDEBugger is an OpenGL debugger and profiler that traces application activity on top of the OpenGL API and lets programmers see what is happening within the graphics system to help find bugs and optimize application performance. The new V2.3 introduces a Calls Statistics view that allows viewing the number of times each OpenGL function call was executed in the previous frame and its percentage of the total functions execution count. This information helps programmers locate redundant OpenGL function calls, state changes, etc. V2.3 also adds support for GL_ARB_texture_rectangle and GL_NV_texture_rectangle extensions. (http://www.gremedy.com)

This paper by Kolb and Cuntz from the computer graphics group of the University of Siegen describes a 3D flow simulation approach on the GPU. The flow simulation is modeled using the so-called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics approach. The presented technique combines the particle simulation, presented by Kipfer et.al. and Kolb et.al. at Graphics-Hardware 2004, with a grid based approach. 3D grids are used to store intermediate flow quantities that are distributed by the particles in their neighborhood. MRT is used to compute the contribution of a single particle to four texture slices simultaneously. Blending the individual contribution of all particles in 16bit textures yields the final 3D force fields used for the simulation of particle motion. ( Dynamic Particle Coupling for GPU-based Fluid Simulation)