PalmSource joins Khronos Group

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	PalmSource joins Khronos Group	By Jørgen Sundgot, Tuesday 23 March 2004

Scarily-named organisation receives PalmSource as member; means that OpenGL will come to Palm-Powered devices, improving gaming support on handhelds.

PalmSource today announced it has joined the Khronos Group as a Contributing Member to encourage the development and adoption of OpenGL ES as an important open 2D/3D graphics API standard for mobile multimedia applications. PalmSource plans to make the OpenGL ES Application Program Interfaces (APIs) available in a future version of Palm OS Cobalt to enable the creation of advanced 3D graphics and multimedia applications for Palm-Powered devices.

Furthering the momentum of Palm OS in the wireless entertainment market, PalmSource will offer its own software implementation of the OpenGL ES APIs and enable the use of OpenGL ES-compliant hardware, allowing high performance graphics applications to run on a wide variety of Palm-Powered devices. This software implementation is designed to provide Palm OS developers with a more cost-efficient development path towards the creation and deployment of sophisticated multimedia applications, while offering an improved multimedia user experience for Open GL ES compliant Palm-Powered handhelds and smartphones.

Additionally, PalmSource will introduce a standardized graphics driver model for Palm OS Cobalt optimized for use with OpenGL ES-compliant chipsets. This driver will accelerate both the application level OpenGL ES APIs and most 2D graphics operations, as performed by Palm OS Cobalt's system rendering technology. This will enable chipset vendors to concentrate on a single, standardized set of acceleration specifications, and allows Palm OS Cobalt to easily take full advantage of the growing number of graphics chipsets that support the OpenGL ES API.

As a member of the Khronos Group, PalmSource is now enabled to participate in the ongoing development of OpenGL ES, which defines subset profiles of OpenGL and brings advanced 3D graphics to a wide range of embedded systems; and OpenML 1.0 which enables developers to easily integrate video, audio and graphics capabilities into their application suites. All Khronos Members are empowered to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, vote at various stages before public availability, and are therefore able to accelerate the delivery of their 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification and conformance testing drafts.