SONY and NVIDIA Become Khronos Promoting Members; Khronos Group Strengthens Key Industry Representation to Ensure Khronos Media Standards Continue to Evolve to Meet the Needs of Embedded Markets.

LOS ANGELES -- The Khronos(TM) Group is pleased to announce that NVIDIA and Sony Computer Electronic Inc. (SCEI) have become Khronos Promoting Members, gaining a seat on the Board of Directors that direct Khronos activities. Khronos is also happy to announce that CoreLogic, GiQuila, Nextreaming and Sasken Communication Technologies have become Khronos Contributing Members to participate in the ongoing development of open, royalty-free embedded media API standards. Also announced today, Harman/Becker has become a Khronos Adopter for OpenGL(R) ES 1.0, which enables them to test their products for conformance with the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification and use the OpenGL ES logo in the automotive market.

Founded in 2000, the Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard APIs such as COLLADA(TM), OpenGL(R) ES, OpenMAX(TM), OpenML(TM), OpenVG(TM) 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.

NVIDIA plays a leadership role in Khronos and is actively promoting numerous Khronos API standards including OpenGL ES, OpenVG, OpenMAX, COLLADA and OpenSL ES. NVIDIA's GoForce family of wireless media processors use the Khronos APIs to deliver a high-performance, visually rich multimedia experience on mobile phones and handheld devices combined with low power consumption and long battery life.

"NVIDIA believes strongly in the power of open standards to create market opportunities and the embedded and handheld industries are today's high growth markets that are demanding advanced media capabilities," said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, chairman of the OpenGL ES Working Group and vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA's Promoter membership will enable us to continue to initiate and influence key Khronos initiatives that are creating significant business opportunities for both NVIDIA and the industry."

SCEI has elected to become a Khronos Promoter to further their leadership role in creating open standards under Khronos' open participation process and royalty-free intellectual property (IP) framework -- including the COLLADA(TM) project that was initiated by SCEI to enable 3D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets without loss of information.

"COLLADA has already made great progress with strong industry support -- and now the time has come to formalize our standardization process by joining Khronos to ensure that any company can participate in its development and to ensure the standard will always be freely available," said Masa Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO at SCEI. "SCEI remains fully committed to COLLADA: it forms a key part of the PLAYSTATION3 tools strategy. SCEI has become a Khronos Promoter so that we can fully support COLLADA, OpenGL(R) ES and other Khronos standards."

Khronos Presentations at SIGGRAPH 2005

COLLADA: An open Digital Asset Exchange Schema for the Interactive 3D Industry Wednesday August 3rd, 1-3pm. Hall J, Room 1. More information at: http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/main.php?f=conference&p= exhibitor&s=index. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

OpenGL ES: "Birds of a Feather" Meeting

Tuesday August 2nd, 2-4pm. Manhattan C, Sheraton Downtown 711 S Hope St, Los Angeles. More information at: http://www.khronos.org/news/events/.

Developing Mobile 3D Applications with OpenGL ES and M3G: Taught by Khronos Members

Tuesday August 2nd, 1:45-5:30 pm. LACC -- Room 502A. Level: Intermediate. This course presents two new 3D graphics APIs for mobile platforms: OpenGL ES and M3G. For more information, please visit: http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/main.php?f=conference&p=courses&s=35&PHP SESSID=aab6a7354db62e66c6793835716a5ceb. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

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