The Khronos Group announced today that Sun Microsystems has joined the group as a Promoting Member to encourage the development and adoption of OpenGL ES as an important open standard for graphics hardware acceleration in mobile devices. Sun said it will work with the Khronos Group to enable OpenGL ES to support the graphics requirements of the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition graphical APIs. In a related press release today, Sun announced an agreement with SGI to cooperate on developing Java bindings to the OpenGL application programming interface (API), Khronos intends to leverage this work to define standardized bindings between Java and OpenGL ES.

The OpenGL ES 1.0 Specification, released to the public today in another related announcement, consists of well-defined subset profiles of OpenGL that enable small-footprint embedded applications with advanced graphics capabilities. OpenGL ES is royalty-free and the specification is available for public download.

“OpenGL ES will be a key enabler for Java applications in a wide range of small-footprint embedded applications that need state-of-the-art capabilities,” said John Fowler, Chief Technology Officer, Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “We want to fully support Khronos in driving OpenGL ES adoption by joining as a Promoting Member.”

“Sun's support within Khronos will provide significant momentum to the use of OpenGL ES as an invaluable low-level graphics API for small footprint Java applications,” said Neil Trevett, senior vice president of market development at 3Dlabs, secretary of the Khronos Group and chairman of the OpenGL ES Working Group. “The widespread availability of both Java and OpenGL ES, and now the standardization of the bindings between them, will enable the emergence of highly portable embedded applications with advanced 3D graphics capabilities.”

The Khronos Group describes itself as “a member-funded industry consortium founded in January 2000 by leading graphics and digital media companies. It is focused on the creation and deployment of rich media through the development of open standard APIs that will enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. All Khronos Promoting and Contributing 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 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts.”

 
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