Following a 2-day summit in Cambridge, UK, members of the Khronos Group's OpenGL Embedded Subset (OpenGL ES) working group announced that version 1.0 of their specification is ready for final review and ratification by Khronos Group members, a process which is expected to lead… to its public release in July 2003. The group characterized its royalty-free, open graphics standard as a 3D-capable API with the capability to “enable many new classes of content-hungry platforms, each with many millions of prospective new users.”

Having completed its development of OpenGL ES 1.0, the working group said it will now turn its attention toward developing conformance testing and implementation procedures, and will also begin version 1.1 of the spec. Additionally, an effort is reportedly underway to develop a “safety critical” subset of the OpenGL ES specification for use in avionics, aerospace, and automotive applications.

OpenGL ES is described as a light-weight, royalty-free embedded graphics standard that provides 3D-capable graphics API profiles for a broad range of embedded systems and devices, including handheld wireless devices, automotive and avionics displays, and multimedia consumer devices such as advanced digital TVs, set-top boxes, and game consoles.

“OpenGL ES will create significant market opportunities for the graphics hardware community who will have a state-of-the-art 3D API under which to innovate high-performance, low-power graphics chips and cores tailored specifically for embedded markets,” noted Neil Trevett, senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs (originator of the OpenGL ES initiative) and chair of both Khronos and the OpenGL ES working group.

 
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