Khronos royalty-free open standards for 3D graphics, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Parallel Computing, Machine Learning, and Vision Processing

In this blog from Collabora, Colloabora introduces their work with environmental nonprofit SOMAR to build an open source XR experience that immerses users in the underwater soundscape of Portugal's Algarve, using real acoustic recordings to illustrate the harmful effects of human-made noise pollution on marine life. Built on OpenXR, the experience was designed to run on standalone headsets as well as Google Cardboard-compatible phone setups, maximizing accessibility for broader audiences. SOMAR has already debuted the application publicly to strong reception, using it as a hands-on advocacy tool with students, families, and the general public.

The Vulkan SDK 1.4.350.0 is now available for download simultaneously for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Highlights of this release include major updates for KosmicKrisp, support for 16 new extensions, and ARM64X support for the GFXReconstruct capture layer. Overall, this maintenance-focused update brings tooling and platform-specific improvements while continuing Vulkan’s steady evolution.

The Khronos Vulkan SC Working Group, in collaboration with RasterGrid, has released the Vulkan SC 1.0.21 SDK, a unified installer for Linux and Windows that combines the Vulkan SC Loader, emulation driver stack, validation layers, device simulation layer, pipeline cache utilities, cube sample, info tool, and CMake and Pipeline Cache Compiler integration in a single package. The SDK replaces the previous process of installing and configuring each component separately, and offers optional automatic environment setup and Pipeline Cache Compiler discovery during installation. The installers are available now on GitHub.

The Khronos OpenCL Working Group has released OpenCL 3.1, moving a number of previously optional capabilities into the core specification. Conformant implementations are now required to consume SPIR-V™ kernels, and to support subgroups, integer dot products, a suggested work-group size query, and a device UUID query that matches Vulkan®'s. The release also includes clarifications to the memory model, event synchronization, and OpenCL C printf, among other refinements. Implementations are in progress from Arm, Imagination, Intel, Mesa, and Qualcomm, along with the Rusticl, PoCL, and CLVK open source projects, across desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms. Read the full announcement on the Khronos Blog, and if you're at IWOCL 2026, come talk to the working group.

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The OpenCL Working Group has published a draft extension (cl_khr_cooperative_matrix) that brings cooperative matrix operations — a key technology for accelerating ML inference — to OpenCL, developed in collaboration with Arm, Intel, and Qualcomm. A companion extension to expose these capabilities directly in the OpenCL C language is also in progress, and the community is invited to review both drafts and provide feedback before they are finalized.