The call for authors for the upcoming WebGL Insights book is now out. We invite proposals for articles on intermediate and advanced WebGL techniques. We invite hardware vendors, browser developers, WebGL-engine developers, application developers, researchers, educators, and others with WebGL experiences they want to share. WebGL Insights will be published by CRC Press for SIGGRAPH 2015.

AJ Guillon from YetiWare Inc will be talking about the “Software Performance Cliff Dead Ahead: Apply OpenCL Now to Stop.” This talk is aimed at both a technical and non-technical audience, and will highlight the decisions made by two fictitious competing startup companies to build the best software in the market. This is a great opportunity for those able to attend the Burlington Ontario event September 4th. Seating is limited to 50 people, so please sign up as soon as possible.

If you were lucky enough to be in TO at last nights Toronto Chapter WebGL meetup at Verold, then you will have had a good night. For those that couldn’t make it, you can find slides from Victor Porof online.

The Khronos Group has posted some of the slide sets from the 2014 SIGGRAPH BOF presentations online.

Rightware showcased the first public demo of the OpenGL ES 3.1 test called U-Boat at the Khronos BoF at Siggraph 2014. We believe it will be the best OpenGL ES 3.1 content available in the world. The benchmark will be available for licensing within Q4, 2014.

Ceemple is an innovative solution enabling rapid development of C++ based technical and scientific computing applications. It features JIT compiler and pre-integrated libraries for maximum development productivity, combined with the performance and integration of standard C++. Ceemple now supports OpenCL targets with the bundled OpenCV computer vision library, for improved run-time performance.

Khronos OpenROAD is an animated video featuring all the royalty-free Khronos APIs working together in an open ecosystem. We started with an idea: a simple sketch of a sports car–and then show how Khronos APIs make it a reality. Our technology powers everything from the initial CAD design and simulation using OpenGL and OpenCL, to the in-car entertainment and communications using OpenSL ES, OpenMAX, and OpenVX, to its starring role in a mobile game using WebGL and WebCL.

At SIGGRAPH 2014, AMD unveiled new additions to the next generation AMD FirePro professional graphics family – AMD FirePro W2100, AMD FirePro W4100, AMD FirePro W5100, and AMD FirePro W7100. These new products are designed for Computer Aided Design (CAD), video, animation, design and engineering professionals. The offerings provide workstation integrators and end users with an exciting choice of performance levels for an extensive array of applications, all supported by certified drivers and powered by OpenCL.

Khronos announced a call for participation today in a project to define a future open standard for high-efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs. Key directions for the new ground-up design include explicit application control over GPU and CPU workloads for performance and predictability, a multithreading-friendly API with greatly reduced overhead, a common shader program intermediate language, and a strengthened ecosystem focus that includes rigorous conformance testing. Fast-paced work on detailed proposals and designs are already underway, and any company interested to participate is strongly encouraged to join Khronos for a voice and a vote in the development process. Complete information on joining the Khronos Group is available online.

Khronos publicly released the OpenGL 4.5 specification today, bringing the very latest functionality to the industry’s most advanced 3D graphics API while maintaining full backwards compatibility, enabling applications to incrementally use new features. The full specification and reference materials are available for immediate download from the OpenGL Registry. The OpenGL 4.5 reference card is available for download today, and as usual, an official OpenGL 4.5 feedback thread is awaiting your feedback. The full press release is available here.

The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of the SPIR 2.0 provisional specification that provides a non-source encoding, and binary level portability, for OpenCL 2.0 device programs. SPIR (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation) is the industry’s first open, cross-platform Intermediate Representation standard for portable heterogeneous parallel computing and is based on LLVM IR. SPIR enables developers to avoid exposing sensitive kernel source and enables a diversity of language front-ends to easily target OpenCL platforms and devices in addition to OpenCL C. Visit the SPIR specification in the OpenCL registry.

Intel will be talking about and demonstrating OpenCL @ Booth #1001 at Siggraph. Most of the Intel events will occur twice throughout the week. Less chance of double booking yourself this year! All the details on Intel booth events and Khronos related events are available online.

ARM will be holding a series of talks at SIGGRAPH on Monday August 11 in room 118-120 from 9AM - 10:30AM. Included in these talks are “Mobile GPU Compute: Exploring the Mobile GPU Through OpenCL” and “ASTC: The Extra Dimension”. You may view a complete list of Khronos Technology related talks on our SIGGRAPH event page.

The long awaited OpenGL ES 3.1 Reference Card is now available online in PDF format. Get your download today!