Fakhir Ansari of Mentor graphics has written an article explaining and illustrating how the new Multimedia framework OpenMAX works and fits into your workflow. The OpenMAX cross-platform API enables accelerated multimedia components from different software vendors to be developed, integrated, and programmed across multiple operating systems and silicon platforms. The OpenMAX standard is made up of three levels, OpenMAX AL (Application Level), OpenMAX IL (Integration Level ) and OpenMAX DL (Development Level). OpenMAX is defined by The Khronos Group and is a new standard, but has already been embraced by several companies.