The Khronos Group - a non-profit industry consortium to develop, publish and promote open standard, royalty-free media authoring and acceleration standards for desktop and handheld devices, combined with conformance qualification programs for platform and device interoperability.
The Khronos Group - Connecting Software to Silicon
The Khronos Group is a not for profit industry consortium creating open standards for the authoring and acceleration of parallel computing, graphics, dynamic media, computer vision and sensor processing on a wide variety of platforms and devices. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos API specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.
OpenGL - The Industry Standard for High Performance Graphics
OpenGL® is the most widely adopted 2D and 3D graphics API in the industry, bringing thousands of applications to a wide variety of computer platforms. It is window-system and operating-system independent as well as network-transparent. OpenGL enables developers of software for PC, workstation, and supercomputing hardware to create high-performance, visually compelling graphics software applications, in markets such as CAD, content creation, energy, entertainment, game development, manufacturing, medical, and virtual reality. OpenGL exposes all the features of the latest graphics hardware.
OpenCL - The open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems
OpenCL™ is the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices. OpenCL (Open Computing Language) greatly improves speed and responsiveness for a wide spectrum of applications in numerous market categories from gaming and entertainment to scientific and medical software.
OpenGL ES is a royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems - including consoles, phones, appliances and vehicles. It consists of well-defined subsets of desktop OpenGL, creating a flexible and powerful low-level interface between software and graphics acceleration. OpenGL ES includes profiles for floating-point and fixed-point systems and the EGL specification for portably binding to native windowing systems. OpenGL ES 1.X: fixed function hardware offering acceleration, image quality and performance. OpenGL ES 2.X: enables full programmable 3D graphics.
EGL™ is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL ES or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system. It handles graphics context management, surface/buffer binding, and rendering synchronization and enables high-performance, accelerated, mixed-mode 2D and 3D rendering using other Khronos APIs.
WebGL is a royalty-free, cross-platform API that brings OpenGL ES 2.0 to the web as a 3D drawing context within HTML, exposed as low-level Document Object Model interfaces. It uses the OpenGL shading language, GLSL ES, and can be cleanly combined with other web content that is layered on top or underneath the 3D content. It is ideally suited for dynamic 3D web applications in the JavaScript programming language, and will be fully integrated in leading web browsers.
WebCL - Heterogeneous parallel computing in HTML5 web browsers
The WebCL working group is working to define a JavaScript binding to the Khronos OpenCL standard for heterogeneous parallel computing. WebCL will enable web applications to harness GPU and multi-core CPU parallel processing from within a Web browser, enabling significant acceleration of applications such as image and video processing and advanced physics for WebGL games. WebCL is being developed in close cooperation with the Web community and has the potential to extend the capabilities of HTML5 browsers to accelerate computationally intensive and rich visual computing applications.
COLLADA™ defines an XML-based schema to make it easy to transport 3D assets between applications - enabling diverse 3D authoring and content processing tools be combined into a production pipeline. The intermediate language provides comprehensive encoding of visual scenes including: geometry, shaders and effects, physics, animation, kinematics, and even multiple version representations of the same asset.COLLADA FX enables leading 3D authoring tools to work effectively together to create shader and effects applications and assets to be authored and packaged using OpenGL® Shading Language, Cg, CgFX, and DirectX® FX
glTF - runtime asset format for WebGL, OpenGL ES, and OpenGL
The "glTF" project aims to define a final stage OpenGL Transmission Format to enable rapid delivery and loading of 3D content by WebGL, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES APIs. glTF together with COLLADA comprise a standards-based content pipeline for rich 3D web and mobile applications. glTF Specification is a work-in-progress from the COLLADA Working Group; it is not an official Khronos-ratified specification yet. It is incomplete and subject to change. The draft specification and related converters and loaders are available on github.
OpenVG - The Standard for Vector Graphics Acceleration
OpenVG™ is a royalty-free, cross-platform API that provides a low-level hardware acceleration interface for vector graphics libraries such as Flash and SVG. OpenVG is targeted primarily at handheld devices that require portable acceleration of high-quality vector graphics for compelling user interfaces and text on small screen devices - while enabling hardware acceleration to provide fluidly interactive performance at very low power levels.
OpenSL ES - The Standard for Embedded Audio Acceleration
OpenSL ES™ is a royalty-free, cross-platform, hardware-accelerated audio API tuned for embedded systems. It provides a standardized, high-performance, low-latency method to access audio functionality for developers of native applications on embedded mobile multimedia devices, enabling straightforward cross-platform deployment of hardware and software audio capabilities, reducing implementation effort, and promoting the market for advanced audio.
OpenMAX IL - The Standard for Media Library Portability
OpenMAX™ is a royalty-free, cross-platform API that provides comprehensive streaming media codec and application portability by enabling accelerated multimedia components to be developed, integrated and programmed across multiple operating systems and silicon platforms. The OpenMAX API will be shipped with processors to enable library and codec implementers to rapidly and effectively make use of the full acceleration potential of new silicon - regardless of the underlying hardware architecture.
OpenMAX AL - The Standard for Media Library Portability
OpenMAX™ is a royalty-free, cross-platform API that provides comprehensive streaming media codec and application portability by enabling accelerated multimedia components to be developed, integrated and programmed across multiple operating systems and silicon platforms. The OpenMAX API will be shipped with processors to enable library and codec implementers to rapidly and effectively make use of the full acceleration potential of new silicon - regardless of the underlying hardware architecture.
StreamInput - Cross-platform advanced sensor processing and user interaction
The Khronos StreamInput working group is driving industry consensus to create a cross-platform API to enable applications to discover and use new generation sensors to create sophisticated user interactions. The new API will support a general-purpose framework for consistently handling advanced sensors such as depth cameras, touch screens and motion and orientation sensors as well as traditional input devices. StreamInput will provide flexible device discovery to enable an application to select and process high-level semantic input from low-level device capabilities, enabling significant innovations by sensor and device manufacturers while simplifying portable application development. The API will also provide system-wide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications such as augmented reality, and will use Khronos’ proven extension mechanisms to enable new types of input devices to be easily added and supported.
OpenVX - Hardware acceleration for Computer Vision applications & libraries
Computer vision has become an essential component of many modern applications including gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, automatic driver assistance, biometrics, computational photography, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more. The OpenVX working group has been formed to drive industry consensus to create a cross-platform API standard to enable hardware vendors to implement and optimize accelerated computer vision algorithms. The OpenVX API can accelerate high-level libraries, such as OpenCV open source vision library, or be used by applications directly. A strong focus will be on providing computer vision on mobile and embedded systems and enabling acceleration on a wide variety of computing architectures including CPUs, GPUs and DSPs. OpenVX will explore interoperability with existing Khronos standards for camera control, video processing, compute acceleration and graphics rendering.
Camera Work Group - CALL for Industry Participation
The Khronos Camera working group is creating an open, royalty-free standard for advanced, low-level control of mobile and embedded cameras and sensors: Mobile and embedded devices are increasingly being equipped with the sensors and processing power for advanced camera-based applications such as computational photography, face and gesture processing, augmented reality and 3D object and scene reconstruction; While Khronos is defining APIs for vision and image processing the industry still lacks a camera API with low-level control of the camera sensor, lens and flash to generate the input image stream needed by cutting-edge computational photography and computer vision; The Camera working group will drive industry consensus to create a cross-platform API that provides functionality such as: burst control over sensor, flash and lens, system wide time stamping of sensor samples, multiple sensor control, output format and resolution selection, region of interest extraction, and consistent device and frame metadata.
The Khronos Group has setup an online Job Board for companies to post job openings that are related to any of the Khronos API's and COLLADA. There is no cost for companies to post openings which require skills in any of OpenGL, OpenCL, OpenGL SC, COLLADA, OpenKODE, OpenVG, OpenMAX and OpenSL ES.
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A new version of the Sony Ericsson Beta SDK for Windows Mobile® 6.1 is now available for download which adds Xperia™ Panels with OpenGL ES support. This allows you to incorporate a broad set of rendering, texture mapping, special effects and other powerful visualization functions and provides a graphics pipeline that allows free access to graphics hardware acceleration on the Xperia X1 phone through the Xperia Panel interface.
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The first public demonstration of OpenCL running on a GPU was done by NVIDIA on December 12, 2008 at Siggraph Asia. This demo of OpenCL on NVIDIA GPU was based on early non-released OpenCL API/driver interface. The nbody simulation shown was a simulation of massive particles under the influence of physical forces. Nbody simulation is known to be computationally intensive. The demo shows how OpenCL can deliver high performance computing using the parallel cores of the CUDA architecture on NVIDIA GPUs. This demo also illustrates the idea that core computational code can be written in OpenCL and will scale to whatever number of cores are available. The demo shown in Siggraph used the 32 parallel cores available on the NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M GPU that it ran on.
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Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group, gave an interview with The Inquirer at MWC last week. Have a read about the Green Goblin's Veep of Embedded Content. Openness was the dominant theme in this discussion on the Open Standards consortium, the Khronus group.
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OpenSceneGraph 2.8, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, has been released. OpenSceneGraph is the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. Along with many updates this version sees OpenGL "draw instanced" extension support and improved COLLADA support.
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OpenGL Bootcamp is an intensive 5-day training course that will arm you with the knowledge to make your 2D and 3D visualizations fly! OpenGL Bootcamp is being offered April 20th to 24th 2009.
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Imagination and Samsung will demonstrate the Omnia HD i8910's stunning shader-based graphics capabilities. Samsung’s new Omnia HD smartphone is a Symbian-based handset built on a Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip with Imagination’s POWERVR SGX graphics processing technology. Demonstrations of OpenGL ES 2.0 shader-graphics content created with Imagination’s development tools will be on show at Imagination’s stand at MWC, Hall 2 #2A05. The POWERVR Insider SDK is fully compliant with the Khronos OpenGL ES 2.0 API.
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PacketVideo today announced the release of OpenCORE™ 2.0. OpenCORE provides the essential media features for device development and enables playing and streaming of standard formats, recording of images and video, and more. OpenCORE 2.0 expands upon PacketVideo's initial offering, including the release of a video telephony engine, OpenMAX encoding support and easier integration of OpenMAX cores.
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Imagination Technologies reports that its POWERVR SGX520, SGX530 and SGX535 graphics cores have passed the Khronos™ conformance tests for OpenVG 1.1. "As a leading member of the Khronos organisation, we were delighted to be the first company to achieve OpenVG compliance for our hardware graphics technology, and to lead the field again with this new range of OpenVG compliances for POWERVR SGX," says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination Technologies.
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Imagination Technologies is demonstrating a POWERVR SGX GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) with accelerated Adobe Flash® Lite™ technology utilising OpenVG at MWC 2009 in Barcelona this week at Imagination's stand Hall 2 #2A05. "This demonstration, the latest product of the strong relationship between Imagination and Adobe, shows the value of OpenVG acceleration for Flash Lite, the key Flash technology for mobile devices such as phones and portable media players." says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination Technologies.
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Imagination Technologies today announced the first in a new family of scalable vector graphics processor IP cores - the POWERVR™ VGX150. The POWERVR VXG150 extends the reach of Imagination’s graphics IP to entry level handsets and developing markets. The POWERVR VGX architecture provides native acceleration of all functionality in OpenVG 1.1, the vector graphics API developed by the Khronos group, offloading virtually all processing from the CPU to deliver high-performance acceleration. Through full support of the OpenVG 1.1 API stack, VGX150 enables full high performance acceleration of all OpenVG applications such as SVG players, Flash Lite™ 3 and Flash™ 7 players as well as native OpenVG content. It achieves extremely low power consumption while requiring very small silicon area for high quality graphical user interface, browser and navigation experiences based on vector graphics.
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The Khronos Group has announced that it will hold a DevU tutorial at this years Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Khronos DevU will cover four major topics: OpenCL, OpenGL, COLLADA, and the Khronos “Mobile API Ecosystem. This will be an all day event held on Tuesday March 24 2009 in partnership with the GDC 2009. Admittance to the session is available to all registered Mobile GDC and regular GDC conference attendees.
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Khronos Group will be offering a Developers University session at Multicore Expo on March 16th in Santa Clara. The Khronos Group DevU will be focused on OpenCL and the handheld API ecosystem for accelerating 2D and 3D graphics. For complete details please visit the Khronos Group DevU event page.
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The new gDEBugger V4.5 adds the ability to view texture mipmap levels. Each texture mipmap level’s parameters and data (as an image or raw data) can be displayed in the gDEBugger Texture and Buffers viewer. Browse the different mipmap levels using the Texture Mipmap Level slider. gDEBugger V4.5 further introduces support of 1D and 2D texture arrays. The new Textures and Buffers viewer Texture Layer slider enables viewing the contents of different texture layers. This version also introduces notable performance and stability improvements. gDEBugger, an OpenGL and OpenGL ES debugger and profiler, traces application activity on top of the OpenGL API, lets programmers see what is happening within the graphic system implementation to find bugs and optimize OpenGL application performance. gDEBugger runs on Windows and Linux operating systems, and is currently in Beta phase on Mac OS X.
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