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Khronos Releases OpenKODE 1.0 Specification for Mobile Rich Media Applications

Business Wire, Feb 12, 2007

Multiple Khronos Members Showing OpenKODE at 3GSM; Standardizes Media Stack Functionality and Dramatically Reduces Application Source Fragmentation; Provisional Specification Encourages Developer Feedback While Maximizing Implementation Momentum

BARCELONA, Spain -- The Khronos[TM] Group announced today that it has publicly released a provisional version of the OpenKODE[TM] 1.0 specification, on schedule, to enable widespread developer feedback and rapid industry implementation of this important new standard that is designed to bring portability and advanced media acceleration to mobile handsets. The conformance tests for OpenKODE 1.0 are expected to be publicly released during the second quarter of 2007 to enable conformant implementations to use the OpenKODE trademark. Numerous Khronos members are demonstrating provisional OpenKODE implementations at 3GSM and the OpenKODE 1.0 specification is expected to be finalized by mid-2007 after integration of industry feedback. The OpenKODE 1.0 provisional specification is free for download at http://www.khronos.org/openkode/ and may be used royalty-free by implementers and developers. Feedback and comments from the mobile and embedded industries are encouraged on the Khronos OpenKODE technical message boards at http://www.khronos.org/message_boards/.> "As the work of the Khronos organization has progressed, it's been clear there is a real hunger for rich multimedia applications on a wide range of embedded devices," says analyst Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research. "However, the industry has desperately needed a unifying architecture for the APIs that will enable this content to be delivered efficiently and across all platforms and operating systems. OpenKODE has the potential to move the mobile industry forward with giant steps in much the same way that DirectX enabled a generation of dynamic multimedia entertainment including 3D games, music, movies, and video on PCs."

OpenKODE is a royalty-free, cross-platform standard that combines a set of native APIs into a comprehensive media stack specification for accelerating rich media and graphics applications. OpenKODE aims to make advanced media capabilities consistently available across multiple devices for increased native source portability and reduced mobile platform fragmentation. OpenKODE 1.0 brings together the OpenGL([R]) ES and OpenVG[TM] Khronos media APIs to provide state-of-the-art acceleration for vector 2D and 3D graphics and provides the new OpenKODE Core API that abstracts operating system resources to minimize source changes when porting games and applications between Linux, Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile, WIPI and RTOS-based platforms. Subsequent versions of OpenKODE will add the OpenSL ES[TM] and OpenMAX[TM] media APIs to provide accelerated video and audio that is fully integrated with graphics processing.

The OpenKODE conformance test suite is being developed by Futuremark under contract to Khronos will enable mobile device chip makers, handset manufacturers and middleware vendors to confirm that their platforms conform to the OpenKODE 1.0 media stack specification and will include trans-API conformance tests to ensure that OpenKODE implementations support rich mixing of media types such as real-time video being processed in a 3D application. The suite of conformance testing tools will be made available through the Khronos Group OpenKODE Adopters program and products that pass all the tests may use the OpenKODE trademark.

"The objective of the OpenKODE 1.0 specification is to enable the small device industry to embed standardized functionality into the core of their products, in such a way that they could still look and feel unique, and yet run software not geared specifically for those devices in such a way that only minimal or no changes are necessary. Imagine for a moment a new market segment for portable games, marketed just like PSP discs or perhaps downloaded through a centralized service, but which can run on any of multiple brands," said Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews.

"The OpenKODE working group has generated a public specification in just 12 months with strong industry support - reflecting the urgent industry need that is addressed by this significant new standard," said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, chairman of the OpenKODE working group and vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA is using the OpenKODE architecture to deliver the full mixed media capability of our GoForce handheld GPUs to mobile developers and we are thrilled to demonstrate our provisional OpenKODE implementation at 3GSM alongside the release of the specification."

About Khronos

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standards such as OpenGL([R]), 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.