The traditional programming models and open standards for communications between processing elements have been left behind somewhat. The interconnect topologies have become more complex and fragmented. No longer is there a clear, unified communication standard that is suitable for all the new interfaces introduced by these heterogeneous architectures. Abaco felt no existing open standard API provided a unified solution. Abaco presented their case the Khronos Group proposing a new standard API called Takyon. Khronos has listened and created the “Heterogeneous Communications” Exploratory Group with a goal to gather industry support for development of a new standard and solicit additional proposals. Take a look and contribute here. For a more in-depth description of the problem, be sure to read Abaco’s blog “Behind the times”.

The Khronos Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies creating advanced acceleration standards, today announces a request for industry feedback to gauge interest in developing a new low-level, heterogeneous communications open standard that could transform the way applications are developed for High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) systems. If there is industry support, then Khronos would create a working group and invite any interested company to participate for a voice and a vote in creating and evolving a multi-vendor standard under Khronos’ proven multi-company governance process. Those interested in finding out more and providing feedback are invited to visit the Khronos Heterogeneous Communication feedback page.

The Khronos Group announces the immediate release of the OpenVX 1.2 specification for cross-platform acceleration of computer vision applications and libraries. OpenVX is a high-level, graph-based API targeted at real-time mobile and embedded platforms. This open, cross-platform, royalty-free standard enables performance-portable, power-optimized computer vision applications such as face, body, and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, autonomous driver assistance systems, visual inspection, and robotics. Core OpenVX 1.2 has significantly expanded functionality, including conditional execution, feature detection, and classification operations.

Don’t miss this year’s OpenVX Workshop at Embedded Vision Summit. Khronos will present a day-long hands-on workshop all about OpenVX cross-platform neural network acceleration API for embedded vision applications. We’ve developed a new curriculum so even if you attended in past years, this is a do-not-miss, jam-packed tutorial with new information on computer vision algorithms for feature tracking and neural networks mapped to the graph API. We’ll be doing a hands-on practice session that gives participants a chance to solve real computer vision problems using OpenVX with the folks who created the API. We’ll also be talking about the OpenVX roadmap and what’s to come.

Khronos Group member Futuremark has added Vulkan support to their 3DMark API Overhead feature test. You can now compare the API performance of Vulkan, DirectX 12, and DirectX 11 with one easy-to-use test.

Mozilla has submitted a proposal to the Khronos Group’s WebGL Next Github proposal repository. From the README, “[Obsidian] is a low-level API that provides maximum feature set of the GPU to the web applications. The API is designed for WebAssembly, modern GPUs, and multi-threaded environment in mind.” Read the complete proposal.

Last week was GDC, and a ton of new tech, as well as new VR games and apps were announced and broadcast out to millions. But one of the most important stories out of GDC was also one of the least flashy. It was a gathering held by a nonprofit known as The Khronos Group, and it dealt directly with how much new VR hardware and software is being released, and how it is rapidly becoming more and more difficult for developers to keep up. Say Hello to OpenXR.

Celebrating a successful first year, the Vulkan API is gaining tremendous momentum in high-fidelity gaming. Vulkan support appears in leading game engines such as Unity and Unreal, numerous game studios actively developing Vulkan titles, and a dozen Vulkan titles shipping including Doom, Quake, The Talos Principle and Dota 2. Vulkan drivers are also shipping from all of the major GPU manufacturers for desktop and mobile systems. Today, Khronos has released new Vulkan extensions for cross-platform access to Virtual Reality and multi-GPU functionality. Find out more about growing Vulkan momentum and the updates and extensions released at GDC here.

Khronos has today announced a call for participation in a new Exploratory Group to create a native 3D Portability API to enable developers to write rendering code that can run efficiently on Vulkan, DX12 and Metal-based systems. This API could also be a solid foundation for the next generation WebGL that can bind to this portable API for use with JavaScript and WebAssembly. Interested companies are welcome to join Khronos for a voice and a vote in this initiative. Find out how to get involved on the 3D Portability homepage.

Facebook-owned Oculus’ head of content Jason Rubin says “We support an open standard… We want everybody in the PC business to join an open standard that’s a platform where everybody gets to say what’s important to them.” Rubin is referencing Oculus’ work with the Khronos Group on developing a common set of industry-wide VR standards. Read more about the work Oculus is doing in VR today.

Silicon Studio is pleased to announce that they have implemented Vulkan in their cross-platform open source game engine, Xenko. Vulkan is the next generation graphics API from the Khronos Group. “We are excited to be one of the first commercially available game engines to support Vulkan!”

The Khronos Group today announced the creation of two standardization initiatives to address the growing industry interest in the deployment and acceleration of neural network technology. Firstly, Khronos has formed a new working group to create an API independent standard file format for exchanging deep learning data between training systems and inference engines. Work on generating requirements and detailed design proposals for the Neural Network Exchange Format (NNEF™) is already underway, and companies interested in participating are welcome to join Khronos for a voice and a vote in the development process. Secondly, the OpenVX™ working group has released an extension to enable Convolutional Neural Network topologies to be represented as OpenVX graphs and mixed with traditional vision functions. Read the press release about both of these Neural Network Standard Initiatives.

The CryEngine roadmap has been released, including specific details about the upcoming CryEngine 5.2 and 5.3. Developers have planned full support for the Vulkan API around mid-october 2016.

Red Gaming Tech had an interview with Tom Olson chair of the Vulkan Working Group, and Neil Trevett President of the Khronos Group. Tom Olson commented “We’re really eager to hear from first-generation developers about what kind of experiences they are having.” Neil Trevett wrote “the rate of Vulkan adoption has been faster than any API that Khronos has ever produced.” There’s a lot of good information on many aspects of Vulkan, head on over and read The Vulkan Interview.

The Khronos Group today announced the formation of a Safety Critical Advisory Panel to create guidelines for the design of safety critical graphics, compute and vision processing APIs. The Safety Critical Advisory Panel will be open to both Khronos members and invited experts from the industry. Markets such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), autonomous vehicles, robotics and avionics increasingly need advanced acceleration APIs that are designed to provide reliable operation and enable system safety certification. The guidelines will be openly published and adopted as part of Khronos’ proven API design process. Experienced practitioners in the field of safety critical system design are invited to apply for Advisory Panel membership, at no cost, with more details at the Khronos Safety Critical working group page.