With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing. You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad. OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it’s getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights.

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After a long time on the sidelines, Intel rival AMD is getting into the netbook game with a dedicated chip designed specifically for computers with screens 12 inches or smaller.

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Hardware hacker Christopher Tarnovsky just wanted to break Microsoft’s grip on peripherals for its Xbox 360 game console. In the process, he cracked one of the most heavily fortified chips ever put into a consumer device.

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Strong industry support for state-of-the-art OpenGL 3.0 API and GLSL 1.30 shading language specifications on all major platforms; OpenGL evolutionary model to accelerate development of standard; Interoperability with OpenCL being defined

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