Khronos Widens Call for Participation in New WebCL and StreamInput Working Groups

August 8, 2011

Tools

StreamInput creating open standard for advanced sensor processing; WebCL defining companion API to WebGL to bring parallel computation to the Web

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- In its 10^th year of operation the Khronos™ Group today widened its call for participation in its two newest working groups: StreamInput™ and WebCL™. StreamInput is defining a cross-platform API for advanced sensor processing and user interaction, and WebCL is creating JavaScript bindings to OpenCL™ to enable heterogeneous parallel computing in HTML5 Web browsers. Any interested company is welcome to join Khronos to make contributions, influence the direction of specifications and gain early access to draft standards before public release for any Khronos working group. More details on joining Khronos can be found at http://www.khronos.org/members/ or by emailing info@khronos.org.

The Khronos StreamInput working group is driving industry consensus to create a cross-platform API to enable applications to discover and use new generation sensors to create sophisticated user interactions. The new API will support a general-purpose framework for consistently handling advanced sensors such as depth cameras, touch screens and motion and orientation sensors as well as traditional input devices. StreamInput will provide flexible device discovery to enable an application to select and process high-level semantic input from low-level device capabilities, enabling significant innovations by sensor and device manufacturers while simplifying portable application development. The API will also provide system-wide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications such as augmented reality, and will use Khronos’ proven extension mechanisms to enable new types of input devices to be easily added and supported. More information on StreamInput is here: http://www.khronos.org/streaminput/.

The WebCL working group is working to define a JavaScript binding to the Khronos OpenCL standard for heterogeneous parallel computing. WebCL will enable Web applications to harness GPU and multi-core CPU parallel processing from within a Web browser, enabling significant acceleration of applications such as image and video processing and advanced physics for WebGL games. WebCL is being developed in close cooperation with the Web community and has the potential to extend the capabilities of HTML5 browsers to accelerate computationally intensive and rich visual computing applications. More information about WebCL, including links to prototype open source implementations from Nokia and Samsung, is here: http://www.khronos.org/webcl/.

“Advances in computational power on a wide range of platforms and devices are greatly accelerating sensor innovation from 9-axis motion positional sensors, to depth ranging cameras. StreamInput will drive the market adoption of advanced sensors by enabling input fusion innovation under a common API that provides portability to application developers,” said Neil Trevett, president of Khronos and vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA. “WebCL is the natural extension of the WebGL and OpenCL work already underway at Khronos and continues the trend of evolving HTML5 not only to support advanced Web experiences but also to become a full-fledged application platform with access to advanced device capabilities.”

“AMD is highly supportive of the WebCL initiative to deliver compute capabilities to Web browsing,” said Suki Samra, Senior Director, Design Engineering (NYSE: AMD). “AMD strongly supports industry standards, and as a leading provider of OpenCL and OpenGL solutions on AMD’s GPUs and APUs believes that WebCL will be a welcome companion to the newly released WebGL standard.”

“We are delighted the Nokia initiative to standardize WebCL has been accepted by Khronos. The developer feedback about our WebCL prototype for Firefox has been positive, and we are committed to work with the open-source community to align it with the developing WebCL standard,” says Jyri Huopaniemi, director, media technologies, Nokia Research Center.

“SoftKinetic is excited to contribute to this standard initiative which will facilitate the adoption of new input devices such as depth sensing cameras. It is important to facilitate content developer’s workflow as much as possible by abstracting these devices behind a robust and standard API,” said Erik Krzeslo, chief strategy officer. “SoftKinetic products will greatly benefit from all what Stream Input offers in terms of simplicity, portability and cross-sensors interactions.”


Learn about OpenGL 4.2 and Khronos APIs at SIGGRAPH 2011 BOF Meetings
WebGL	Wed, August 10th	10AM-noon	Convention Centre, Room 122 (West Building)
OpenCL	Wed, August 10th	1:30-3:30PM	Pan Pacific Hotel, Crystal Ballroom B&C
OpenGL	Wed, Aug 10th	4-6PM	Pan Pacific Hotel, Crystal Ballroom B&C
OpenGL ES/Mobile	Thu, Aug 11th	10AM-noon	Convention Centre, Room 122 (West Building)
COLLADA	Thu, Aug 11th	2-4PM	Convention Centre, Room 122 (West Building)

Visit Khronos at booth #663 and Khronos Press & Educators Open House at booth #764 to see Khronos members display Khronos Group-developed technology in action.

About The Khronos Group

The Khronos Group is an industry consortium creating open standards to enable the authoring and acceleration of parallel computing, graphics and dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. Khronos standards include OpenGL^®, OpenGL^® ES, WebGL™, WebCL™, OpenCL™, OpenMAX™, OpenVG™, OpenSL ES™, StreamInput™ and COLLADA™. 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. More information is available at www.khronos.org.

Khronos, StreamInput, WebGL, WebCL, COLLADA, OpenKODE, OpenVG, OpenSL ES and OpenMAX are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc. and OpenGL is a registered trademark and the OpenGL ES and OpenGL SC logos are trademarks of Silicon Graphics International used under license by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.