Details of this news, numerous other Khronos Member announcements and twenty technology lectures covering all Khronos Media APIs offered at full day technology forum on March 10, 2005 in San Francisco, California
February 28, 2005 – Clearlake Park, California – The Khronos™ Group today announced that draft specifications of the OpenGL® ES 1.2 and 2.0 API (application programming interface) standards are available, on schedule, for public review by selected applicants. Khronos invites any interested party to execute a Khronos Reviewer’s Agreement and provide feedback and guidance to the OpenGL ES Working Group to ensure that these important industry standards meet the needs of the industry. Details about this review phase, the Reviewer’s Agreement and more details about OpenGL ES – including a Table of Contents of each draft specification – are available at www.khronos.org/opengles/review. Both versions of the API are expected to be publicly released in the summer of 2005.
Khronos has adopted a dual-track roadmap for OpenGL ES as new-generation programmable graphics engines are being prepared to ship into embedded devices from games consoles to cell-phones. OpenGL ES 1.X specifications will continue to be evolved to support enable new generations of fixed function 3D accelerators while OpenGL ES 2.0 is the first embedded 3D API with full shading language programmability through the OpenGL ES Shading Language – a close derivative of the desktop OpenGL Shading Language. OpenGL ES 2.X specifications will be developed over time to expose the capabilities of evolving programmable hardware.
“The two-track OpenGL ES roadmap satisfies the unique demands of embedded graphics as the industry creates low-cost, low-power programmable graphics solutions,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, chairman of the OpenGL ES Working Group and senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs. “OpenGL ES 2.0 will bring the programmable power of the OpenGL Shading Language to embedded devices just one year after it was ratified for the desktop – but the diverse embedded market also demands continued support for fixed function accelerators. By separating the 1.X and 2.X API tracks we can design streamlined APIs that minimize implementation cost and power – while enabling platform vendors to choose the APIs that provide precisely the functionality they need.”
“Khronos’ innovative approach to the OpenGL ES roadmap will smooth the transition to embedded programmable graphics – with the 1.X fixed function APIs and 2.X pure programmable APIs being designed to minimize the effort to port applications to shader-capable hardware,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. “The OpenGL ES Working Group continues to achieve its schedule milestones for evolving this key API – which is vital to success in the fast moving embedded industry.”
Press and Developers Invited to Attend Khronos “DevU” Developer’s University March 10 2005
Media experts from the Khronos membership will deliver over twenty in-depth technology lectures on Khronos APIs on Thursday March 10, 2005 from 9:00 am to 8:00 PM, at “Mezzanine” at 444 Jessie Street; just two blocks from the Game Developer and Embedded Systems Conferences at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Attendance is free and all are welcome - register at: http://www.khronos.org/devu/register.html. Khronos members will also demo numerous new OpenGL ES implementations. Full descriptions of session content are available at: http://www.khronos.org/devu/locations/sanfrancisco2005.html.
Speakers will include: Dr. Jon Peddie of TechWatch; and representatives from Khronos Member companies 3Dlabs, ALT Software, ATI, Falanx, Freescale, Hybrid Graphics, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Nokia, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Quantum3D, Seaweed Systems, Texas Instruments and more.
About OpenGL ES
The OpenGL ES standard is royalty-free and defines subset profiles of OpenGL® to enable small-footprint embedded applications with advanced graphics capabilities and has been widely adopted by the wireless and gaming industries. The OpenGL ES 1.1 and EGL 1.1 specifications are available for free download at http://www.khronos.org/opengles/spec.html for any third party to implement in products with no licensing restrictions or royalties.
About Khronos
The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium creating open standard APIs such as OpenGL® ES, OpenMAX™, OpenML™ and OpenVG™, to enable the creation and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices, including 3D graphics on mobile phones. Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos API specifications, vote at various stages before public release, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge media platforms and applications by having early access to specification drafts and conformance tests. Please go to www.khronos.org for more information.
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Khronos, OpenVG and OpenMAX are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. OpenGL is a registered trademark and OpenML and the OpenGL ES logo are trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc. used by permission by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.