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What Does The Future Hold For AMD's Mantle?

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So the primary intention was to light a fire under the butts of the other API companies. Good job AMD, now lets see if they can leverage Samsung's 14nm process for their new architecture and get Intel sweating a bit.
 
At first I thought this would hinder progress with proprietary contracts on what games could and couldn't have it, and then it being outside of Direct-X. I'm glad this was just a bar raiser for everyone else, I look forward to what the next generation of graphic APIs has to offer.
 
There is a similar conversation happening over on Tek Syndicate.

My chime in was that, even if Mantle is rendering "obsolete" by DirectX12, it has served its purpose. AMD will keep Mantle around for a bit, just to make sure that DirectX12 doesn't stagnate like DirectX11 did.

Even if DirectX12 "wins" - AMD still wins, because software is catering more to their (current) hardware. Also, now someone else is doing the heavy work. Mantle will probably integrate any features that DirectX12 develops, and vice-versa. Tech Darwinism at its greatest.
 
Seems to me that Mantle was more of a skeleton for DX12 and Vulcan, and future releases will be just that as well, which of course is a very good thing! Thanks AMD, you got the ball rolling on what too many people were afraid to do for too long.
 
"Vulcan? Is DX12 not good enough? I'd rather have one uniform API that all companies work together on (DX 12) rather than 3 competiting ones TBH, because it gets harder on the game developers themselves. "

Except directx12 is microsoft windows 10 only. So, if you want only one, then it would be vulkan, which will work on every platform.
 
PC gaming is gaining momentum. The market value is growing fast. Windows 10 promises better gaming focus, including some pretty exciting news about DX12.

AMD has had a hand in this, they deserve some good PR for committing to this, specially in their "underprivileged" financial position, compared to Intel and nVidia. They gave the industry a very good nudge and aren't going to sit on it now that it's done it's job.

AMD is coming out a much more open and consumer friendly brand than nVidia lately. I hope they manage to grab some foundries for the next gen, with the promises of VR optimization and Oculus partnership, new memory systems...
 
@8R_Scotch what do you mean lately? IMO AMD has always been more open and consumer friendly. Problem is that Nvidia sometimes (or even often) has better product, although usually AMD has better performance price ration.

Still, i am bit sad if AMD indeed shuts mantle down. It would have been perfect api for legacy windows platforms and for those who say opengl/glnext or whatever is better option... well how many opengl only games we have? Hopefully this will change because of steam machine, but based on past trend of opengl i wouldn't count on it.
 
I give a big thumb up to AMD for doing this, because I am sure cannot rely corporations like Intel (look at their SLOW CPU/graphics advancement), Microsoft (only care about their xbox for the last 10 years) and Nvidia (charge a hefty premium on their new feature like G-sync) doing something like this.
 


This is very short sight. Don't you like choices? If you just want one API, how about just one brand CPU, GPU... then you basically ask for a console! Do want PC gaming kind of like console? I have to PC gaming on MS OS because that is the ONLY choice for the last 30 years. If there are more "gaming API", may be we can build/buy a gaming system using OSX, Linux, SteamOS... I don't see why this is a bad thing. If you are old enough in PC tech, you will see almost every type of PC components are down to 2 or 3 choice compare to the PC "golden era".
 


because directx is only exclusive to microsoft platform.
 


because if they do it the same way as nvidia they will lose. look at Stream which meant to compete directly with CUDA. and then look what happen when they try to play the premium game when they priced 7970 much more expensive than 580 which is a direct opposite to their past strategy.
 


cross platform between Xbox and PS? doubt that both company interested with that idea. if possible they want the game to be exclusive to their platform only. giving reasons for people to own their platform. and both console doesn't need Mantle. they probably have something that is much more low level than Mantle due to console hardware being static.
 


better for AMD actually. pushing further might be stressful for their very limited resource and probably they were under constant pressure from game developer to truly open Mantle itself to other hardware vendor so Mantle able to work on other hardware as well. as for OpenGL games we have many of those actually. for developer that port their title to linux they have no other option than to port their titles to OpenGL. just that on windows developer prefer to use directx because it comes with direct support from microsoft.
 


choices is good but in case of graphic API i'd rather all game developer to work on one API. the problem with directx is the API is only made available to microsoft platform. and the latest version often only available to the latest version of windows. but Vulcan/OpenGL is true cross platform API. lets take example from the recent issue. Civ Beyond Earth port to linux. when the game close to launch on linux platform the company that doing the port (Aspyr Media) are talking about dropping support for AMD and intel at launch because they have problems with those two vendor due to their OpenGL support are behind nvidia. if many of the games ware made with OpenGL to begin with both AMD and intel will have better support for OpenGL. and porting title across different OS will be much easier.
 

I mean this is more evident lately, due to NVIDIA's 970 and 9**M troubles. It's also true that NVIDIA does shell out higher performance and sometimes more compatible and feature rich cards, although higher priced. This is due to better resources and market share though, not engeneering skill.

Considering their handicaps, it's amazing that AMD can dish out competitive GPUs and tech with the likes of NVIDIA and Intel (although the latter in mid to low-end).

Meanwhile NVIDIA is acting more and more like they don't care, since they've got market lead and a diversified/secure investments. So yeah, their tech is impressive (e.g. Tegra X1 is exciting for the future of VR, you could potentially put something like that in your headset the next generations or so and go wireless). But I don't like their attitude lately.

 


no comment on their attitude because i think most people already know how nvidia operates. but saying that what they got right now not because of their engineering skill is not true at all. before Kepler comes out many said that it is impossible for nvidia to be more power efficient than AMD. and with kepler nvidia able to take more market share from AMD in notebook where in the past that segment was totally dominated by AMD because of their very power efficient GPU. but kepler alone did not kill AMD in the discrete notebook market. it was one of Rory Read decision that ultimately kill AMD in that segment.
 


yes... PORTS, but how many games are Opengl only... meaning it was chosen because someone thought it was better API than DirectX. I would consider it to be quite self explanatory which api developers prefer if they rather do with both than one (even if using one is enough). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OpenGL_programs at least in this list there are not so many games, considering how old opengl actually is. For me only Wolfenstein: The New Order stands out as new game, and most go to category of "Hexen II" aka "old as hell"
 


i never said in my post about OpenGL being the better choice. developer will use what is the most convenient and make the most sense to them financially. on windows based machine that would be directx. Mantle seems nice but developer won't use them unless they were sponsored by AMD.
 


yes... PORTS, but how many games are Opengl only... meaning it was chosen because someone thought it was better API than DirectX. I would consider it to be quite self explanatory which api developers prefer if they rather do with both than one (even if using one is enough). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OpenGL_programs at least in this list there are not so many games, considering how old opengl actually is. For me only Wolfenstein: The New Order stands out as new game, and most go to category of "Hexen II" aka "old as hell"
Click to expand...

That would largely be because DirectX is more than just Direct3D (which is the OpenGL competition). Since most of the gamers were on Windows anyway, might as well use the whole of DX. The loop was: more gamers on Windows -> more games on DX -> better drivers made for DX -> more gamers on Windows. The APIs (OGL and D3D) aren't really different in any aspect really (some extensions make the current version of OGL faster than D3D, but are a pain to support), devs have just come to know DX better.

With the rise of iOS, Android and OSX (and hopefully SteamOS soon), we already see OGL getting more attention. The biggest hurdles, the ones Valve is fighting with, is good APIs to match the rest of DX, and drivers.
 
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