Khronos Announces New Members Monotype Imaging, Scaleform, TAT and Accelerated OpenVG Demonstrations.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- OpenVG a Catalyst for Widespread Adoption of 2D Vector Graphics  Hardware for Mobile; Stimulates Development of Advanced High Quality 2D Applications and User Interfaces

The Khronos(TM) Group is pleased to announce that numerous members are now shipping devices accelerating OpenVG(TM) 1.0, a royalty-free, open standard for low-level 2D vector graphics, and that new members Monotype Imaging, Scaleform and TAT have joined to participate in ongoing development of the API.

OpenVG enables hardware acceleration of libraries such as Flash and SVG, enabling high-quality, anti-aliased, scalable 2D vector graphics on embedded and handheld devices with highly interactive performance and low levels of power consumption. The OpenVG standard has been designed to seamlessly interoperate with OpenGL(R) ES 3D graphics; creating a high-performance, fully integrated 2D and 3D embedded graphics acceleration environment. The OpenVG API specification is available for free download at http://www.khronos.org/openvg/spec.html.

As an open industry standard interface, OpenVG will be an important catalyst for driving widespread adoption of 2D vector graphics hardware for the mobile industry," said Andrzej Mamona, Architect at ATI and the OpenVG Work Group Chair. "This hardware acceleration will stimulate development of a new class of more complex high quality 2D applications and user interfaces."

See Demos of OpenVG by Hybrid Graphics, Imagination Technologies, Mitsubishi, Renesas and Scaleform at GDC on the Khronos Booth #1632 at GDC.

Among many other demos, attendees are invited to see Imagination Technologies' PowerVR MBX combined with the Scaleform VGx vector graphics driver accelerating Flash content using the OpenVG and OpenGL ES APIs.

"Mobile devices need smooth, high-quality 2D vector graphics to enable high-quality user interfaces and ultra-readable text on small screens," says David McBrien, vice president business development, Imagination Technologies. "With support for the OpenVG standard developed by the Khronos Group, PowerVR can provide a low-power consumption solution with a high level of acceleration for 2D graphics such as SVG, Flash, PDF and Postscript. This accelerated, scalable anti-aliased vector graphics solution opens up new possibilities for advanced UI, navigation applications, games, e-books, screensavers and multimedia content."

"Bitboys was the first company to introduce a dedicated hardware vector graphics processor to the wireless market. The OpenVG 1.0 compatible Bitboys G12 is extremely compact in size and offers more than 100-fold rendering performance improvement over software-based solutions. This technology will become a standard in wireless devices over the next few years," said Petri Nordlund, CTO of Bitboys. "You can see our OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics processor Bitboys G40 here at GDC and are invited to see a variety of our OpenVG demos at the Khronos Mobile forum in Tokyo on April 28th."

"HUONE has developed a software implementation of OpenVG API called 'AlexVG engine' and a SVG tiny player running on OpenVG called 'AlexVG t-player,'" said Hwanyong Lee, HUONE (formerly MTIS). "We released an OpenVG API evaluation version for Windows at CeBit 2006 Hannover, and more than 300 evaluation copies of the CD were distributed, and we expect to distribute evaluation version of AlexVG engine running on the OpenVG API via internet in June 2006."

"Hybrid sees OpenVG as a crucial graphics technology for mobile phones and other embedded devices, and Hybrid's OpenVG serves as the acceleration platform for vector-based content formats like SVG and Flash," says Ville Miettinen, CTO of Hybrid Graphics. "Hybrid has been involved with 2D and SVG since 2002, and now see a strong demand for low-level 2D vector graphics standards. Hybrid's commercial OpenVG implementation is already on the market, and our non-commercial version will be made available April, 2006."

"The adoption of OpenVG as the interface to hardware accelerated 2D vector graphics will propel the development of rich graphical content applications and services," said Brad Sipes, VP Operations and CTO of Ikivo. "With over 60 million units deployed, Ikivo is the leading provider for vector graphic software for mobile devices. We are uniquely positioned to bring reach media and graphic services to mobile users and leverage the additional performance capabilities that OpenVG enables. Ikivo Multimedia SVG Player, a W3C SVG 1.2 compliant viewer, may be the world's first commercially available software that integrates to the OpenVG API."

"Monotype Imaging's goal is to help ensure that the Khronos OpenVG(TM) specification will become an efficient hardware acceleration layer for scalable fonts and multilingual text composition, allowing mobile application developers and content creators to benefit from rich graphic capabilities, with the highest quality of scalable, legible text supporting all languages of the world," said Jack Murphy, vice president of research and development at Monotype Imaging Inc.

"TAT is very happy to join Khronos as a Contributor Member and be part of the development process to see that the user interface industry will be well represented," said Ludvig Linge, CEO of TAT. "TAT believes that the standardization of the graphics hardware interface through APIs like for example OpenGL ES or OpenVG is necessary and will improve the adoption rate of advanced user interfaces."

About Khronos

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard APIs such as COLLADA(TM), OpenGL ES, OpenMAX(TM), OpenML(TM) and OpenVG, and OpenSL ES(TM) to enable the authoring and acceleration 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 media platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests. Please go to www.khronos.org for more information.

Khronos, OpenVG, OpenMAX and OpenSL ES are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. COLLADA is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. used by permission by Khronos. 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.