Khronos President Neil Trevett talks open APIs

OPENNESS IS not exactly something our Charlie gives Nvidia credit for, but when the INQ caught up with Neil Trevett, the Green Goblin's Veep of Embedded Content, at MWC last week, 'openness' was the dominant theme as we discussed Open Standards consortium, the Khronus group.

Trevett is originally an electrical engineer with over two decades of experience in the 3D graphics industry, having worked his way up through BenchMark Technologies (now Creative Labs), to become President of the Web3D Consortium from 1997 to 2005. He now serves as President of the Khronos Group where he runs the OpenGL ES working group.

The Khronos group pulls together a consortium responsible for creating, maintaining and promoting OpenVG standard, along with other multimedia APIs like OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenMAX. Trevett himself is responsible for facilitating and pushing the apps to non-PC platforms like mobile phones.

"We're focused on creating all of the APIs that silicon exposes to the software community," said Trevett, simplifying things for us a bit and adding, "We are the gateway into awesome silicon for video, audio, 3D graphics and 2D graphics."

Trevett said Khronos APIs with OpenGL ES had started cropping up in almost every mobile device currently available, allowing applications to be written using "great 3D, great audio and video acceleration," really bringing rich multimedia to tiny battery-powered devices.

Asked whether he was talking smartphones or MIDs, Trevett answered, "Both". Nvidia's Tegra, he noted, was already on a mobile platform with GL ES, which he reckons means Nvidia can provide the game play power of an Xbox running on a few hundred milliwatts.

When we pushed him on that point, however, Trevett admitted trying to play console or first person shooter game on a mobile would not necessarily be ideal, noting that "the user interface is just is not appropriate" and would likely result in "a horrible gaming experience".

That doesn't mean immersive gaming on a mobile won't happen though, and according to the Green Khrony, "You really are going to find some really compelling games on mobile devices that use 3D, but the smart ones are going to be figuring out the strengths of this new platform" in order to boost user experience.

These strengths, say Trevett, include the fact mobiles are handheld, responsive to movement, location aware, socially connected and can access the Internet. "It'll be a new genre of games which we haven't yet figured out," he said.

The main point, noted Trevett, was to be able to expose the capabilities of the silicon to the software developing communities, to tell them, "here are all the APIs you need, you have the power to use all this silicon capability," and let them scuttle off to develop stuff.

Showing off the Tegra development platform, Trevett explained it was possible for the inbuilt camera to track a user's head position, make use of the accelerometer and image detection capabilities, noting, "You can't do that with a Playstation three... well, not unless you're very strong!".

In other words, Nvidia is really trying to bring the Wii experience to a wee cell phone like device, something Trevett says is "generally a new class of computing". Tipping his cap to the God of Intel, Trevett said, "The fact that it's getting the power of Moore's law flowing into this silicon and the Khronos API exposing that silicon's capability is explosive... in a good way!"

Noting that the biggest problem until recently had been fragmentation in the mobile space, Trevett told us developers would likely be relieved that they no longer had to develop a multitude of different versions for every game with a serperate set of APIs. "OpenGL ES is the first Khronos API which is literally everywhere," he said, adding, "Wherever a mobile phone has 3D capability, it's OpenGL ES, whether it's Android, Iphone, Palm Pre or the Linux community, they're all using OpenGL ES."

What does this mean for the battle gearing up between Intel and ARM? "I think X86 has a place, I think ARM architecture has a place," said Trevett diplomatically, adding that Intel's Atom was actually a really good processor which Nvidia was really planning to take advantage of with its Ion platform, whether Chipzilla likes the idea or not.

Listing two platforms Nvidia has already managed to worm its way into – namely multi core laptops with NV GeForce and X86 Intel Atom based netbooks coupled with Ion chipsets – Trevett said the firm was eyeing a third, lower-cost category using devices like Tegra on an ARM base. This, he reckons, will offer decent gaming performance and high definition media at a tenth of the power. Tegra, he noted, pretty much already has the power of Ion in a really low-power package.

"We have a GeForce GPU that's been architected from the ground up to be super low power, which is why we can deliver an Xbox experience on a battery," he boasted, adding that the ideal would be for a device which could go days without charging at a price point of around $100.

"ARM and that integrated approach will always give lower power and lower cost than the X86-based approach, but each has its place, so they're not necessarily competing with each other," noted Trevett.

Giving lip service to Nvidia's new Android friend – after the firm announced Tegra would be able to run either Windows Mobile, Windows CE or Android – Trevett noted that developers very much liked the freedom which Google's platform provided. "Out of all the different Linux OSes out there, it's interesting having Google as a benign dictator in the middle," he said, quickly adding, "In a good way!"

As for Tegra's future ambitions, Nvidia certainly doesn't plan to rest on its laurels for long. "I think you're going to find, eventually, that Tegra's everywhere," noted Trevett, citing set top boxes, TV sets, cameras, mobile phones, netbooks and GPS systems as just a few possible examples. µ