Khronos Blog

The set of extensions known as Vulkan Video, developed by the Vulkan® Working Group at The Khronos® Group, provides developers with vendor-independent access to video decoding and encoding functionality in modern GPU hardware. Today, with the release of version 1.4.321 of the Vulkan specification, Vulkan Video is once again being expanded for encoding operations with the introduction of the Encode Intra-refresh extension—the second

Synchronization in Vulkan® has long been one of its most notorious challenges, something developers haven’t been shy about reminding us. The Khronos® Vulkan Working Group has been steadily working to make Vulkan a joy to use, and simplifying the synchronization model has been high on our priority list. One of the most frequent developer frustrations has been the complexity of managing image layouts, a pain point we’re tackling

The Khronos® OpenXR™ Working Group has released a groundbreaking set of OpenXR extensions that establish the first open standard for spatial computing, enabling consistent cross-platform support for plane and marker detection and tracking, precise spatial anchors, and cross-session persistence. These new Spatial Entities Extensions are now available for public review, and we invite developers to provide feedback to help drive the continued evolution. As the first implementations roll out in 2025, this milestone brings developers powerful new tools for building persistent, interoperable XR spatial experiences across a growing range of devices.

The set of extensions known as "Vulkan Video", developed by the Vulkan® Working Group at Khronos®, provides developers with vendor-independent access to video decoding and encoding functionality in modern GPU hardware. Today, with the release of version 1.4.317 of the Vulkan specification, this set of extensions is being expanded once again with the introduction of VP9 decoding. VP9 was among the first royalty-free codecs to gain mass ado

VisIt, the open-source scientific visualization tool developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is entering a new era of advanced rendering. In a collaborative effort between LLNL’s VisIt team and NVIDIA, VisIt has been enhanced with state-of-the-art rendering capabilities by integrating a Khronos Group standard called ANARI™ (Analytic Rendering Interface). This integration, led by Kevin Griffin (a senior developer technology engineer at NVIDIA, ANARI working group member, and former LLNL employee) and in partnership with LLNL developers Kathleen Biagas and Mark Miller, brings physically accurate ray tracing, global illumination, and broader platform support to VisIt’s high-performance visualization workflows.

OpenVX, the industry-standard graph compute API for computer vision and machine learning, has recently introduced three new provisional extensions that significantly enhance its programming model. In this post, we’ll explore what’s new, why it matters, and how developers can benefit.

The Khronos® Group is celebrating a significant milestone as SYCL™ marks its tenth anniversary. First ratified and published in May 2015, SYCL has grown from an ambitious specification to a cornerstone of heterogeneous computing, enabling developers to write single-source C++ code for a wide range of accelerators, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and specialized AI hardware. The SYCL developer community and members of the Khronos SYCL Working Group recently gathered at the International Workshop on OpenCL and SYCL (IWOCL 2025) to share the latest developments in the SYCL ecosystem, and celebrate this milestone.

In June 2024, the Khronos 3D Formats Working Group released the glTF 2.0 Interactivity draft extension (KHR_interactivity) for public review and comment. Now, thanks to valuable community feedback and almost a year of continued development, we are nearing the finish line on releasing KHR_interactivity together with a set of companion extensions. These extensions provide a straightforward, standardized method for embedding interactive behaviors directly within glTF 3D assets, enabling developers to create engaging 3D experiences with consistent interactive functionality across different platforms and applications. As we prepare to submit the glTF interactivity extensions to the Khronos Board for ratification, we are seeking final input from early adopters. We invite content creators, artists, implementers, and engine developers to explore and experiment with the openly available tools and sample assets to integrate interactive glTF content into their projects.

The 13th International Workshop on OpenCL™ and SYCL™ (IWOCL 2025), held from April 7–11 in Heidelberg, Germany, brought together a vibrant community of developers, researchers, and industry professionals. This year's event confirmed something many of us in the field have long suspected: far from being overshadowed by newer technologies, OpenCL continues to evolve and thrive as a critical foundation for cross-platform high-performance computing across industries.

Google delivers a wide range of continuously evolving hardware products to a vast global audience. Google’s smartphones, smart watches, earbuds, tablets, smart home devices and more are sold through the Google Store and physical and digital third-party retail vendors around the world. As a global brand known for breaking new ground with AI, smart home, and personal device experiences, Google is faced with a significant challenge: creating engaging, effective product training and marketing materials that work anywhere in the world.

Datoviz is a cross-platform, open-source, high-performance GPU scientific data visualization library designed for interactive exploration of large datasets. Written in C/C++, it leverages the Khronos Vulkan® graphics API and integrates with the glfw window library. Datoviz aims to provide a unified, language-agnostic platform for interactive visualization in both 2D and 3D, with support for GUIs and general-purpose GPU compute.

The OpenVX Working Group releases new extensions plus roadmap guidance to help developers ensure compliance with safety standards, process synchronized metadata more efficiently, and provide insights into future OpenVX enhancements that will make it more powerful, flexible, and easier to implement.

On Tuesday, January 22, the Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) hosted a virtual town hall to explore a pressing question: Are Gaussian Splats (GS) ready for standardization? The event drew hundreds of participants and sparked a lively debate. Already, the conversation is slated to continue at MSF’s “Gaussian Splats Town Hall Part 2” on March 5, 2025.

The Khronos 3D Formats Working Group is developing a new addition to the glTF ecosystem that will revolutionize how complex 3D scenes are built on the Web. While glTF, the widely-adopted asset open standard for 3D web content, typically handles one asset at a time, this addition will enable creators to efficiently combine multiple glTF assets into sophisticated scenes. The 3D Formats Working Group is still weighing whether this project will ultimately be released as a glTF extension or an entirely new format. For the purposes of this blog, we will discuss it as the latter: the “glTF External Reference Format.” 

Khronos just returned from a dynamic and productive week at SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, which took place from December 3–6 in the bustling city of Tokyo, Japan. This annual gathering of some of the world’s most innovative minds in graphics, XR, and emerging spatial computing technologies provided the perfect backdrop for the Khronos Group to showcase its leadership in shaping the future of 3D graphics and immersive experiences. With key announcements, a series of well-attended Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions, and a vibrant networking event, Khronos reaffirmed its position at the forefront of standardization for the 3D industry.