OpenVG is an
API
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
designed for
hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics
Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector displ ...
. Its primary
platforms are mobile phones, gaming & media consoles and consumer electronic devices. It was designed to help manufacturers create more attractive
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...
s by offloading computationally intensive graphics processing from the
CPU onto a
GPU to save energy. The OpenGL ES library provides similar functionality for 3D graphics. OpenVG is managed by the
non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
technology
consortium
A consortium () is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations, or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a ...
Khronos Group
The Khronos Group, Inc. is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of 170 organizations developing, publishing and maintaining royalty-free interoperability standards for 3D graphics, virtual reality, augmented reality, parallel computat ...
.
History
The OpenVG group was formed on July 6, 2004 by a selection of major firms including
3Dlabs,
Bitboys,
Ericsson
(), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...
,
Hybrid Graphics
AMD Hybrid Graphics technology is a collective brand from AMD for features of its Radeon line of discrete and integrated GPUs, promoting higher performance and productivity while reducing energy consumption.
The technology previously applied t ...
,
Imagination Technologies,
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
,
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...
,
PalmSource,
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
, and
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
. Other firms including chip manufacturers
ATI,
LG Electronics
LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG, LG Corporation, the fourth ...
,
Mitsubishi Electric
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1921 as a spin-off from the electrical machinery manufacturing d ...
,
NVIDIA
Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
, and
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
and software- and/or IP vendors DMP,
Esmertec, ETRI,
Falanx Microsystems, Futuremark, HI Corporation,
Ikivo, HUONE (formerly MTIS), Superscape, and Wow4M have also participated in the working group. The first draft specification from the group was made available at the end of 2004, and the 1.0 version of the specification was released on August 1, 2005.
On January 16, 2007, Zack Rusin from Tungsten Graphics announced the start of an independent
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
implementation of OpenVG built on top of
QtOpenGL.
Shortly after, Ivan Leben started
ShivaVG, another open-source project to implement an ANSI C implementation of the specification on top of
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...
.
Since February 27, 2007 the OpenVG Sample Reference Implementation is available from the Khronos Website under MIT open source license.
On December 9, 2008, the Khronos Group publicly released the OpenVG 1.1 Specification. This latest revision includes glyph rendering for accelerated text, improved anti-aliasing, and Flash support. An updated reference implementation is also provided, as well as a conformance test suite.
On May 1, 2009 Rusin added OpenVG state tracker to
Mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...
, which enables SVG vector graphics to be hardware accelerated by any
Gallium3D-based driver. It was removed again in Mesa 10.6 on June 15, 2015.
In September 2011 OpenVG working group decided not to make any regular meeting for further standardization. However, working group decided to continue maintenance and promotion of OpenVG 1.1 specification.
Implementations
In hardware
*
Renesas SuperH
SuperH (or SH) is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems.
At the ...
SH2A based SH7269 solution. Developed for low system-cost embedded GUIs, with up to 2.5MB of embedded SRAM for picture-buffer.
*
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
/
ATI Z160 and Z180 OpenVG 1.x Graphics core. Implemented in the Freescale i.MX35, i.MX51 and i.MX53. IP sold to Qualcomm and rebranded "Adreno" for Snapdragon cores.
*
ARM Mali
Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...
Graphics Processing Units
* Broadcom BCM4760 SoC – Announced 01/June/09. BCM4760 Contains “an OpenGL(R) ES 1.1/OpenVG(TM) 1.0-compliant graphics processor”
* Digital Media Professionals Inc.(DMP Inc.) SMAPH-F(dandelion VG)
*
Imagination
Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes ...
PowerVR VGX150 OpenVG 1.1
* Imagination PowerVR SGX Series5 – API support includes OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, OpenVG 1.1, OpenGL 2.0/3.0 and DirectX9/10.1
* Takumi GV500 – GV300, GV500 Graphics Accelerator IP-Core
*
Think Silicon ThinkVG Graphics Core OpenVG 1.1
*
Vivante
Vivante Corporation was a Fabless manufacturing, fabless semiconductor industry, semiconductor company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with an R&D center in Shanghai, China. The company was founded in 2004 as GiQuila and focused on the ...
GC350 (2D graphics core) OpenVG 1.1
*
Vivante
Vivante Corporation was a Fabless manufacturing, fabless semiconductor industry, semiconductor company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with an R&D center in Shanghai, China. The company was founded in 2004 as GiQuila and focused on the ...
GC400 and above are 3D graphics cores supporting
OpenGL ES
OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerate ...
2.0 and OpenVG 1.1
*
Adreno
Adreno is a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) semiconductor intellectual property cores developed by Qualcomm and used in many of their SoCs.
History
Adreno is an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) within Qualcomm's Snapdrago ...
GPUs support OpenVG 1.1.
Qualcomm
Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...
provides an SDK for Android.
For GPUs
* Mesa
Gallium3D – VMware/Tungsten Graphics provides an OpenVG implementations for cards with Gallium drivers (Gallium drivers for nVidia, AMD/ATI, and VMware are available). OpenVG has been removed from
Mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...
in version 10.6.
For media accelerators
* Hanwha Systems AlexVG-forma – Accelerating Vector Graphics API on Media acceleration hardware. Using horse power of Multimedia or 2D bitmap graphics hardware.
On OpenGL, OpenGL ES
* Hooked Wireless OpenVG – complete implementation of both OpenVG 1.01 and OpenVG 1.1, implemented on top of OpenGL ES, and is fully conformant. Claim “It leverages proprietary technology from Hooked in the areas of tessellation and triangulation for shapes and curve.” First released in Feb/2008.
* Hanwha Systems AlexVG-forge – An OpenVG engine which is 2D vector graphic standard by using the graphic chip that supports OpenGL/OpenGL ES.
* Mazatech AmanithVG GLE – commercial. Built on top of OpenGL 1.1+ and OpenGL ES 1.x. Claim “achieving better performance than software rasterizers in terms of high resolution animations and complex special effects (transparencies, fading, realtime rotoscaling and many others).”
* MonkVG – open source (BSD), only "OpenVG ''like''"
* ShivaVG – open source (LGPL)
* ShaderVG – based on ShivaVG but implements draw calls GLSL shaders
In software
* Khronos OpenVG Reference implementation
* Hanwha Systems AlexVG – First released in Sep/2005
* Mazatech AmanithVG – OpenVG crossplatform library with pure software and OpenGL (/ES 1.1) rendering backends
* Vega – Gallium3D state tracker
* GingkoVG
See also
*
cairo
Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
– 2D cross platform graphical vectorial draw and text toolkit. OpenVG-1.x and cairo API differ in scope as cairo attempts to unify printing output across multiple backends with support for text.
comparison between OpenVG-1.O and cairo API
/ref> Cairo can use OpenVG as a backend.
*Direct2D
Direct2D is a 2D vector graphics application programming interface (API) designed by Microsoft and implemented in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (with Platform Update ...
* Skia Graphics Engine
* Starling Framework
References
;General
Public forums
Public registry
OpenVG Conformant companies
OpenVG 1.1 Specification
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110517105306/http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/rel46.html Khronos Press Release — Khronos Group Releases OpenVG 1.0 Specification
BitBoys Press Release — Bitboys Introduces Vector Graphics Processor for Mobile Devices
OpenVG 1.1 Press Release
OpenVG 1.1 Specification
External links
*
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20121109042002/http://www.hygraphics.com/English/index.htm GingkoVG
{{Khronos Group standards
Cross-platform software
Graphics libraries
Vector graphics