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.
Chapters - Community driven regional meetup groups
Chapters host all kinds of Khronos technology-related events, from casual meet ups and socials to hack fests, fundraisers, guest lectures, community service and educational events.
GDC was a beehive of activity with companies madly competing for attention. The Khronos Group was no exception, as they had a large presence this year at GDC. GFXSpeak discusses the changing tide. "The mobile gaming market is growing fast, enabled by smart phones and devices that are getting smarter with every turn of the Moore’s Law crank. The new processors including Nvidia’s Tegra, the Imagination-fueled OMAP processors and Intel’s coming Medfield; Freescale, Marvell, and others all do 3D as a matter of course. There’s a sea change coming in the next 24 months as these new processors enable 3D content." Read the complete article at GFX Speak.
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SRS Labs announced the availability of its new SRS TruGaming™ audio enhancement technology suite, which delivers an immersive, surround sound experience for mobile games. Designed to bring 3D positional audio and effects to mobile games over any standard stereo headphones, SRS’ TruGaming is the industry’s first and only publicly offered audio technology suite designed specifically to be part of a fully conformant solution of the recently introduced Khronos OpenSL ES™ 1.1 standard.
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Qualcomm has licensed SRS Labs’ industry-leading audio APIs, including SRS’ OpenSL ES and OpenAL audio API solutions for mobile devices. “This agreement with Qualcomm is a significant step forward in cementing our worldwide leadership in mobile audio enhancement solutions,” said Bob Lyle, managing director of global business development for SRS Labs, Inc.
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Jon Peddie Research has written up a great review of the Khronos Groups new StreamInput API. Kathleen Maher writes "There is a tipping point out there somewhere and it doesn’t seen too far away. The Internet of Things is practically building itself. Khronos’ first role will be to help developers take advantage of sensors for mobile and console devices, but the day is not far off when the applications for sensors broaden further into our everyday lives and capabilities."
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KDE SC 4.7 Beta 1 features improvements to KWin, the window manager for the KDE Plasma Desktop, adding support for OpenGL-ES 2.0 and improving its overall performance on mobile devices.
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SIGGRAPH Asia's inaugural symposium on Apps is in answer to the demand for innovation, sophistication, portability, and ubiquitous connectivity in the world of smart phones and tablets. The program aims to educate and explore how visual and animation techniques are applied on mobile devices to enhance the experience for end users and drive the use of advanced graphics capabilities on the multitude of new devices available today. Submitters to SIGGRAPH Asia’s Symposium on Apps can consider participating in presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and exhibits. Complete details are available on the SIGGRAPH Asia Symposium for Apps page. Submission deadline is September 15 2011.
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AMD's new Radeon HD 6990M is based on the TeraScale 2 unified processor architecture and the Barts GPU core. This is a mobile equivalent to the company's high-end Radeon HD 6990 PCI Express graphics card design and features 1,120 stream processing units, 56 texture units, 128 Z/stencil ROP units, and 32 colour ROP units. AMD has included support for OpenGL 4.1, OpenCL 1.1 and MicroSoft's DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. There was no mention of the Thermal Design Point, so it is unclear how much power will be required to run this new chip.
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A new feature rich application to develop and test GLSL shaders called "Shader Devel and 3D Viewer" has been publish on the android market for devices running android 2.2 or newer. This application lets you edit, save, load and test your shaders, manage the scene, lighting, texture and uniforms and load your own obj models.
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Version 0.9.9 of the free open-source, cross-platform 3D application framework PixelLight has been released. The focus was on the support of mobile devices, improving Unicode support, bug fixing and enhancing the general usability of the technology. Starting with this release, there's support for Google's mobile operating system Android and the OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer has been improved. The OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer can now be used natively under MS Windows and Linux without using an emulator.
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