Bitboys Oy, Superscape, Symbian and Texas Instruments become newest Khronos Members, bringing special expertise in applications and technology for wireless computing devices and mobile phones
October 16, 2002 – CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & INTERNET 2002, Las Vegas – The Khronos Group is pleased to announce that Bitboys Oy, Superscape, Symbian and Texas Instruments have joined the Khronos Group as Contributing Members. These companies join Khronos Promoting Members 3d4W, 3Dlabs, ARM, ATI Technologies, Discreet, DVS, Imagination Technologies, Motorola, Nokia, RealVision and SGI—and Contributing Members HI, NVIDIA, Seaweed, Vicarious Visions and Yumetech. All of these companies recognize the urgent need for a cross-platform graphics API with advanced 2D and scalable 3D capabilities, and have joined the Khronos Group to participate in the development and deployment of OpenGL® ES and OpenML™; royalty-free, open standard APIs that enable authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. The current members extend an invitation to any company to join Khronos and further develop implementations. Please visit www.khronos.org to see How the Khronos Group Works.
Khronos Members Motorola, Nokia, Superscape and Texas Instruments demonstrate their expertise in wireless computing and mobile phones by hosting numerous educational sessions at CTIA Wireless and Mobile Entertainment Summit in Las Vegas; October 16-18, 2002. A list of these sessions may be found at www.khronos.org and at the end of this release.
“Advanced media and graphics acceleration is absolutely essential if the wireless industry is going to live up to its promise,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, the leading market research firm in multimedia and graphics. “This can only be accomplished with robust and fully supported open standards. The broad industry support shown by the increasing list of world-class companies joining the Khronos group indicates we will have the rich multimedia devices promised for the coming revolution in dynamic mobile playback.”
“Bitboys Oy recognizes how the standardization of 3D APIs in the PC graphics market boosted the ability of even smaller companies to design ASIC products that were compatible with the offered software content,” said Juha Taipale, CEO of Bitboys Oy. “We believe the same is true for the mobile devices market. With Bitboys’ decade of experience in the graphics hardware, now focused into dealing with the tight space, power and price constraints of these new devices, we are in an excellent position to contribute to the Khronos Group development of OpenML and OpenGL ES.”
“With the emergence of increasingly capable handsets, rich 3D applications, as delivered by Superscape’s Swerve product, promise significant revenue opportunities for the industry,” said Dr. Mike Grant, VP marketing and strategy at Superscape. “Standardisation is a key element in enabling this market, and we are delighted to join the Khronos Group to support the valuable contribution this group is making to global standardisation efforts in wireless 3D.”
“Advanced 2D and 3D graphics are key enablers for delivering rich and compelling content on mobile phones,” said Bill Pinnell, product manager for Multimedia and Games, Symbian. “Symbian is committed to open industry standards and is delighted to join the Khronos Group as a Contributing Member. We look forward to contributing to the development of the OpenGL ES standard and enabling the Symbian development community to take advantage of OpenGL ES’s flexible, powerful and fit-for-purpose APIs, to bring advanced graphics to existing and future Symbian OS mobile phones.”
“TI is excited to join the Khronos Group and support its efforts to create open standard APIs for mobile graphics applications,” said Paul Werp, worldwide director of marketing for TI’s OMAP platform. “Advanced graphics for gaming, animation and multimedia messaging will drive market adoption of enhanced handsets and services, and, with over 10 years of wireless expertise, TI is committed to bring valuable contributions to defining the OpenGL ES standard.”
How to Get Involved
There are four levels at which an individual or company can participate in OpenML™ and OpenGL® ES embedded subset development and usage. Please visit www.khronos.org to see a Summary of Membership Rights and Benefits.
1. Application developers - may use drivers implementing Khronos standards with no license or royalties.
2. Adopters - any company may sign a royalty free license to implement Khronos-based specifications.
3. Contributors - may apply for open membership in the Khronos Group at a nominal annual fee, with full working group participation and voting rights.
4. Promoters – may apply for membership consideration. Promoters act as the “Board of Directors” to drive the direction of the Khronos Group and standardization activities, with final specification ratification voting rights.
Two Separate Specification Development Tracks are required to answer the call for integrated specifications that will support rapid changes in media technology and market demands. These two complementary specifications are essential to create interoperability between platforms, hardware devices and software applications.
OpenGL® ES will be created using standardized subsets of OpenGL that will allow the creation of small-footprint 2D and 3D APIs to bring dynamic media capabilities to a wide variety of mobile and embedded devices. The Khronos Group is focused on producing API profiles to meet the requirements of a range of market segments, including the wireless industry, safety-critical automotive and avionics displays, handheld and line-powered appliances and rich-media devices such as advanced digital TVs, set top boxes and game consoles. Through the Khronos Group – this specification will be made available, royalty free, to the embedded industry. All OpenGL work in the Khronos Group is being undertaken with the support of the OpenGL ARB, the governing body for the OpenGL specification.
OpenML™ is a software environment that, in conjunction with the peer OpenGL® API, enables digital content authoring application developers to easily integrate video, audio and graphics capabilities into their application suites, while providing portability to multiple operating systems, CPU architectures and add-in hardware devices. The OpenML 1.0 specification was ratified and made publicly available in 2001 and has provided a significant step forward in the standardization of media manipulation in the content creation industry. Commercial implementations of OpenML 1.0 are currently being shipped on IRIX®. Further implementations are being developed on Linux®, Microsoft Windows® platforms, and the Solaris™ Operating Environment, with shipments starting later this year.
About the Khronos Group
The Khronos Group was founded in January 2000 by a number of leading graphics and digital media companies including 3Dlabs, ATI, Discreet, Evans & Sutherland, Intel, SGI and Sun Microsystems to promote the creation and deployment of rich media through the creation of open standard APIs to enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms & devices. Go to www.khronos.org for more information.
Khronos Members at CTIA:
Seamless Mobility
Time: Oct. 16, 2002 from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Location: Sands Expo and Convention Center, Room 203
Khronos Member speakers:
- Bill Krenik, Advanced Wireless Architectures Manager, Texas Instruments
- Juha Lappalainen, VP, Sales & Marketing, IP Mobility Networks, Nokia Networks
More Information: http://www.wirelessit.com/education/eductracks.cfm?calID=101
Series 60 Platform Workshop for Developers
Time: Oct. 17, 2002 from 1:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Location: Venetian Room - 603
Khronos Member speakers: Hosted by Nokia
More Information: http://www.wirelessit.com/education/seminars.cfm#nokia
Messaging Your Customer
Time: Oct. 17, 2002 from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
Location: Venetian Room 205
Khronos Member speaker: Craig Peddie, General Manager, Lexicus Division, Motorola
More Information: http://www.wirelessit.com/education/eductracks.cfm?calID=92
Khronos Members at Mobile Entertainment Summit:
Mobile Entertainment: Poised to Explode?
Time: 10:00-10:30 Demonstrations and Case Studies
Location: Venetian Hotel
Khronos Member speakers: Gold Sponsor Presentations by Texas Instruments
More Information: http://www.mobiletechforum.com/agenda.htm
Mobile Entertainment: What’s Hot, What’s Not
Time: Oct. 16, 2002 from 10:30 AM to 11:15 PM
Location: Venetian Hotel
Khronos Member speaker:
- Paul Werp, Worldwide Marketing Director, OMAP Platform, Texas Instruments
- Juan Montes, VP, Technology, (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Motorola
More Information: http://www.mobiletechforum.com/agenda.htm
Multimedia’s Future
Time: Oct. 16, 2002 from 4:30-5:15
Location: Venetian Hotel
Khronos Member speaker:
Mike Grant, VP Marketing Superscape
More Information: http://www.mobiletechforum.com/agenda.htm
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