SoftBank Mobile enabled to influence and promote open media standards for mobile devices - including OpenKODE adopted as part of SoftBank Mobile’s new POP-i platform.

San Diego, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/09/2007 -- The Khronos™ Group is pleased to announce that SoftBank Mobile Corporation of Japan has joined the Khronos Group as a Contributing member. In May 2007 SoftBank Mobile announced their adoption of Khronos’ OpenKODE standard for advanced graphics and media processing in its new Portable Open Platform Initiative (POP-i) platform for mobile phones. Now, as a member of Khronos, SoftBank Mobile will be able to contribute to and vote on the development of OpenKODE and any other Khronos specifications as they are being created and evolved.

“We have been impressed by the Khronos Group’s proven ability to define advanced standards for mobile media acceleration, deliver them quickly to meet emerging market needs – and to prevent fragmentation within its standards to provide a stable programming environment,” said Hiroshi Ohta, executive vice president, product and service development, SoftBank Mobile. “We have confidence that Khronos will continue to provide the foundation specifications for advanced media acceleration that will enable us to create a thriving developer community for the POP-i platform - and we are pleased to announce that we are joining Khronos to support and encourage its ongoing activities and the OpenKODE standard.”

“We are delighted that SoftBank Mobile has decided to join the Khronos Group to provide their support and insights into the evolution of OpenKODE and other Khronos standards,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA. “A deep understanding of operator requirements is vital to ensure that our specifications continue to meet real-world market needs. Khronos is working hard to be an effective forum for the silicon, handset, software and operator communities to come together effectively to create open standards that generate market opportunities for the entire mobile industry.”

See Khronos at SIGGRAPH 2007, San Diego; August 7-9 2007
Any members of the press and industry are invited to visit the Khronos Booth #227 to see demonstrations by Khronos Group members and to attend these Khronos events:

SIGGRAPH Course “3D Ecosystem” Tuesday 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM – Conference room 4
Khronos Handheld API BOFs: Tuesday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM – Conference room 2
Khronos “Kodebusters” Party: Tuesday 6:00 PM-8:00 PM – Conference room 2
Khronos Japanese BOF: Wednesday 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM – Conference room 2
COLLADA Toolchain BOF: Wednesday 2:00 PM - 3:45 PM - Conference room 2
COLLADA Demo Party: Wednesday 3:45 PM – 4:45 PM - Conference room 2
OpenGL BOF: Wednesday 5:15 PM – 7:15 PM – Conference room 2
OpenGL Party: Wednesday 7:15 PM – 8:30 PM – Conference room 2

More details at http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/san_diego_siggraph_2007/

About the POP-I Platform
The POP-i platform will enable native applications to access the full power of the OpenKODE media stack architecture which enables 2D graphics, 3D graphics, video and audio to be accelerated and flexibly combined to unlock the full potential of rich media silicon. The use of OpenKODE will encourage and protect the investment of software developers in the POP-i platform by ensuring application portability across multiple handsets – both now and into the future as new handsets are introduced.

About OpenKODE
OpenKODE is a royalty-free, cross-platform standard that combines a set of native APIs into a comprehensive media stack specification for accelerating rich media and graphics applications. OpenKODE aims to make advanced media capabilities consistently available across multiple devices for increased native source portability and reduced mobile platform fragmentation. OpenKODE 1.0 brings together the OpenGL® ES and OpenVG™ Khronos media APIs to provide state-of-the-art acceleration for vector 2D and 3D graphics and provides the new OpenKODE Core API that abstracts operating system resources to minimize source changes when porting games and applications between Linux, Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile, WIPI and RTOS-based platforms. Subsequent versions of OpenKODE will add the OpenSL ES™ and OpenMAX™ media APIs to provide accelerated video and audio that is fully integrated with graphics processing. More information in OpenKODE can be found at www.khronos.org/openkode/.

About The Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standards such as OpenGL®, OpenKODE™, OpenGL® ES, OpenMAX™, OpenVG™, OpenSL ES™, OpenML™ and COLLADA™ to enable the authoring and acceleration of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. 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, OpenKODE, OpenVG, OpenMAX and OpenSL ES are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. Web3D and X3D are trademarks of the Web3D Consortium. COLLADA is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. used by permission by Khronos. OpenGL and OpenML are registered trademarks and the OpenGL ES logo is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. used by permission by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.