ALT Software, Fujitsu, Nazomi, Oplayo, Reakosys, Samsung Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc and TKO Software join as Contributors; Hybrid Graphics and Texas Instruments become Promoters; Broadcom and others become Open GL ES 1.0 Adopters; OpenVG and OpenMAX API initiatives launched
July 6, 2004 – EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN – The Khronos™ Group is pleased to announce that ALT Software, Fujitsu, Nazomi, Oplayo, Reakosys, Samsung Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and TKO Software have joined as Contributing Members to work closely with over 50 existing Khronos Group members to support the creation of open, royalty-free standard APIs to grow the markets for hardware and software products that enable authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. In more member news; Hybrid Graphics and Texas Instruments, both Contributor level Members with several years ongoing commitment to Khronos API development, have both been approved as Khronos Promoters for a closer involvement in providing strategic guidance on the Khronos Group Board of Directors. Also announced today, Broadcom, Digital Media Professional Inc., and the Institute for Information Industry have become Khronos Adopters for OpenGL® ES 1.0, enabling them to test their products for conformance with the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification and use the OpenGL ES logo.
Additionally, in two separate releases today, Khronos has announced that it has created two new API initiatives: OpenVG™ that will provide a low-level hardware acceleration interface for vector graphics libraries such as Flash and SVG on handheld devices; and OpenMAX™ that will standardize access to media processing primitives, used extensively in graphics libraries and video codecs such as OpenGL® ES and MPEG-4, to rapidly and effectively make use of the full acceleration potential of new silicon. All Khronos Members are able to participate in these new Working Groups as well as the ongoing development of OpenGL ES which is bringing advanced 3D graphics to mobile and embedded systems, and OpenML™ which enables easy integration of video, audio and graphics capabilities into media authoring applications. Khronos invites any company with interest to join as a member and participate in the development of any of these standards. Please go to http://www.khronos.org/members/index.html for more information.
Developers, editors or analysts with an interest in learning more about Khronos Group Standards and the effect they are having on the digital media industry are invited to an in-depth briefing with Khronos President and OpenGL ES Work Group Chairman, Neil Trevett, at EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN, July 21-23, 2004, or see demos of Khronos APIs by Member companies: ALT Software, NeoMagic, NVIDIA, Renesas and TAKUMI Corporation on the Khronos Stand #1022 on the North American Pavilion. Please email Khronos for an appointment or more information. See http://www.khronos.org/news/events.html#wirelessjapan04 for information on the Khronos Member Demos.
“The continuing growth in Khronos membership and the widening interest in using Khronos’ proven development process and infrastructure for efficiently creating and deploying media API standards, are both clear indicators that Khronos is effectively fulfilling its industry role in creating media authoring and deployment market opportunities for its members,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs. “We particularly welcome the many new Khronos Member companies in Asia Pacific as this reflects the region’s leading-edge adoption of media technologies, and will enable Khronos to better respond to and enable the rapid developments in this dynamic market.”
New Khronos Promoters
“Hybrid is proud to be chosen as a Promoter member, and we are honored to be recognized as one of the leading experts in graphics technology,” says Ville Miettinen, CTO of Hybrid Graphics. “Hybrid has already licensed OpenGL ES implementations to leading manufacturers, and continues to take its standardization work in Khronos seriously. Khronos has a crucial role in delivering strong, proven standards needed by the mobile content business.” Please visit www.hybrid.fi for more information.
“Texas Instruments extended its commitment to open standards and the Khronos group by taking up a Promoter level membership. TI’s OMAP™ 2 architecture features high-performance multimedia accelerators which are made simple to use through APIs such as OpenGL ES and the new OpenMAX,” said Roger Nolan Marketing manager, Software Strategy, Texas Instruments and TI’s board representative at Khronos. For more information, see www.omap.com
New Khronos Contributors
“ALT Software is very pleased to join the Khronos group as a Contributing member in order to participate in the development of these much needed standards for low power, portable devices,” said Chris Brady, President, ALT Software. “We invite you to see an implementation of the OpenGL ES API and ALT custom libraries running as a Real-Time Embedded solution, designed for low power, limited memory, small screen devices at EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN on the Khronos booth #1022.” www.altsoftware.com
“Fujitsu will provide advanced Mobile Media Platform products, which include a graphics accelerator supporting OpenGL ES, for cellular phone and other mobile applications.” said Makoto Awaga, Deputy General Manager of DCP Solution Division, LSI group at Fujitsu. “We believe it is mandatory to support open standard APIs like OpenGL ES for multimedia consumer products. Based on our long experience in 2D/3D graphics arena, we are going to maximize the competitive advantage provided by our cutting edge accelerator technology to help establish the best optimized platform for the OpenGL ES API.”
“Nazomi will help establish standards that are practical and widely supported,” said Jay Kamdar, President & CEO of Nazomi Communications Inc. “Our standards compliant applications processors provide headache free solutions for our partners & customers across the globe.”
“Reakosys believes that the successful widespread deployment of mobile 3D graphics for user interfaces, entertainment and games is dependent on industry-wide standards on which developers can rely,” said Kevin Lee, CEO of Reakosys, Inc. “Reakosys is pleased to join the Khronos Group and will enjoy working shoulder to shoulder with our customers and partners as a Khronos Contributing Member.”
“The activities under Khronos in which Samsung will participate actively, will expedite the product development for multimedia devices as well as digital contents” said Dr. Hyung-lae Roh, Executive Vice-President of System LSI division at Samsung Electronics. “This cross-industry cooperation among top companies will have an effect of real synergy between hardware and software, thus providing the market with a greater variety of high-quality multimedia products and companies with reduced time-to-market.”
About Khronos
The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard APIs to enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media 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. 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 and OpenML are registered trademarks and the OpenGL ES logo is a trademark 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.