OpenGL ARB to Pass Control of OpenGL Specification to Khronos Group; Significant Roadmap Synergy and Close Cooperation under a Single Body Will Enable OpenGL Family of Standards to Accelerate Advanced 3D Deployment on Diverse Platforms.

BOSTON -- The Khronos(TM) Group is pleased to announce that the OpenGL(R) ARB (Architecture Review Board), the governing body for OpenGL, has voted to transfer control of the OpenGL API standard to the Khronos Group. The Khronos Group has voted to establish an OpenGL Working Group that will control and evolve this vital standard for cross-platform 3D graphics with significantly enhanced participation as ARB companies join over one hundred Khronos members involved in creating open standards for dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms. The full transfer of OpenGL to Khronos is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2006 with full support for OpenGL and its evolution to continue uninterrupted during this transition with full updates on both www.opengl.org and www.khronos.org.

The OpenGL ARB and the Khronos Group have long collaborated to ensure consistency in the OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenML, COLLADA and OpenGL SC standards. As a result of this transition all OpenGL-related activities will now occur under the single Khronos participation framework to enable fully-integrated cooperation between these related standards activities so that OpenGL may form the foundation for a coherent set of standards to bring advanced 3D graphics to all hardware platforms and operating systems -- from supercomputers to jet fighters to cell phones. The multi-track Khronos organization ensures a constructive balance between inter-working group synergy while still enabling each working group to make focused decisions to meet the needs of its own target market.

"The evolution of the OpenGL API and the membership of the ARB have reflected the changes in the graphics industry over the years as the use of 3D graphics moved from high-end workstations and simulators to PCs and mobile laptops, thanks to a new generation of consumer-oriented companies such as Apple, ATI and NVIDIA," observes ARB secretary Jon Leech. "Now 3D acceleration is moving to cell phones and OpenGL is there too as OpenGL ES, the successful subset of OpenGL for embedded systems created within the Khronos Group. We have decided to move OpenGL into Khronos to ensure the future health of OpenGL in all its forms."

This transition will enable Khronos to coordinate a joint roadmap strategy for OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenGL SC and COLLADA to maximize synergies between the various members of the OpenGL-related standards family to accelerate its architectural evolution to support advanced programmable features while minimizing differences between diverse platforms. Additionally, COLLADA will be enabled to form a vital link to authoring platforms for both OpenGL and OpenGL ES, and Khronos will be able to leverage work in its cross-platform EGL standard to augment and perhaps eventually replace the GLX/WGL/AGL platform-specific variations.

"As a long-time Promoter Level member of the Khronos Group and the OpenGL ARB, ATI strongly supports the transition of the OpenGL specifications and workgroups to the Khronos Group," said Robert Feldstein, vice president, engineering, ATI Technologies. "The communities for OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and other Khronos standards will enjoy the advantages of working more directly together. We envision that OpenGL will continue to evolve into a coherent family of APIs focused on bringing advanced graphics processing everywhere."

Also as a result of this transition, Khronos will be able to leverage shared effort on generating OpenGL-related SDKs and documentation. For example, the OpenGL extension registry will grow into a registry database for all the Khronos APIs -- providing software developers with a valuable centralized informational resource.

"This transition ensures OpenGL's rightful place as the foundation for advanced 3D graphics on almost every platform in the industry as we combine the intellectual firepower of the ARB OpenGL architects with the significant commercial momentum of OpenGL ES," said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA strongly supports this next step in OpenGL's evolution as we see both desktop and mobile industries benefiting from an integrated roadmap for OpenGL, OpenGL ES and COLLADA."

See Khronos at SIGGRAPH 2006, Boston, July 31st to August 4th 2006

Any members of the press and industry are invited to visit the Khronos Booth #611 to see demonstrations by Khronos Group members and to attend any Khronos-sponsored events:

--Tech Talk: OpenGL ES, OpenVG & OpenKODE -- Wednesday 2nd August 10AM-3:30PM, Room 206A

--OpenGL BOF -- Wednesday 2nd August 4-6PM Room 206A

--COLLADA BOF & Social Event -- Wednesday 2nd August 6-8PM Room 206A

--OpenGL ES BOF -- Thursday 3rd August 10AM-12PM Room 251

--Tech Talk: COLLADA -- Thursday 3rd August 12-2PM Room 251

More details at http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/siggraph_2006

About OpenGL

The OpenGL graphics system specification allows developers to incorporate a broad set of rendering, texture mapping, special effects and other powerful visualization functions and provides a graphics pipeline that allows unfettered access to graphics hardware acceleration. Since its introduction by SGI in 1992, OpenGL has become the industry's most widely used and supported 3D and 2D graphics API. OpenGL is supported on all major computer platforms, including AIX(R), HP-UX(R), IRIX(R), Linux(R), Mac(R) OS X, Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000 and Windows(R) XP and Solaris(TM). With broad industry support, OpenGL is the vendor-neutral, graphics standard that enables 3D graphics on multiple platforms ranging from cell-phones to supercomputers. OpenGL's consistent backwards compatibility has created a stable foundation for sophisticated graphics on a wide variety of operating systems for over 10 years. OpenGL is constantly evolving state-of-the-art functionality to efficiently support a wide array of applications from consumer games to professional design applications.

About Khronos

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standards such as OpenKODE(TM), OpenGL(R) ES, OpenMAX(TM), OpenVG(TM), OpenSL ES(TM), OpenML(TM) and COLLADA(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 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, OpenKODE, 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.