Aug 22 2003

The Khronos Group has ratified the OpenGL ES 1.0 royalty-free open standard for advanced 2D and 3D graphics in cell phones.

The OpenGL ES standard defines subset profiles of OpenGL to enable small-footprint embedded applications with advanced graphics capabilities.

The OpenGL ES specification has been developed by many industry-leading companies that are members of Khronos, together with the full support of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB); the governing body for the OpenGL desktop standard.

The OpenGL ES 1.0 standard was produced in less than twelve months using the Khronos Working Group process, and Khronos expects to update the OpenGL ES specification annually in order to track and enable the rapid developments of graphics capabilities in handheld and embedded devices.

OpenGL ES 1.0 has been designed to run both in software implementations as small as 50Kbytes, and also to enable hardware graphics pipeline acceleration on both fixed point and floating point systems. The OpenGL ES working group has simultaneously defined a companion specification to OpenGL ES, called EGL 1.0, which standardizes how OpenGL ES may be integrated into a wide diversity of operating systems.

The OpenGL ES 1.0 and EGL 1.0 specifications are now available for free download from Khronos for any third party to implement in products with no licensing restrictions or royalties. Within three months, Khronos will release details of an OpenGL ES 1.0 Adopter’s Program to enable interested companies to join Khronos for a small administrative fee in order to gain access to source code for Conformance Tests and example implementations, and to use the OpenGL ES trademark on products that pass the defined testing procedure.

Now that the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification is ratified, Khronos is initiating a parallel working group to create a closely-related OpenGL profile to meet the particular needs of safety critical markets - including automotive and avionics displays. Any company interested to participate in this development is encouraged to join the Khronos Group and help ensure that this new OpenGL ES profile meets the needs of the industry.

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium founded in January 2000 by leading graphics and digital media companies.