Tuesday, March 3rd 2015
AMD Releases Mantle Programming Guide and Reference API
AMD announced that it published the complete 450-page programming guide for its Mantle 3D graphics API, and the reference API itself. The two can be accessed from here. In the run up to its GDC 2015 presentation, in a blog post written by the company's top technology exec Raja Koduri, the company said it will talk about the future of Mantle in its GDC presentation. The company intends to develop, maintain and support Mantle and its eco-system, while maintaining that it will participate in the development and support of industry-standard APIs such as DirectX 12 and GLnext (the next major version of OpenGL).
Source:
AMD Gaming (blog)
34 Comments on AMD Releases Mantle Programming Guide and Reference API
Well, that's what you get for being dumb enough to go with a proprietary API.
Also, inb4 "Mantle prompted DirectX 12 to be closer to the metal". No it didn't, do proper research before you fanboy.
No SDK for anyone but partners.
Mantle has done its job and prompted improvements to DX that may have had to happen anyway (I'm looking at those 8 jaguar cores in consoles).
Truform (tesselation), CTM (OpenCL/DirectCompute), HDR (implementation into pixel shader 2.0), and the list goes on and on and on and on and on...
The difference is this time they got people to practically use the programming set (primary associated with draw calls in this case) earlier, when they first supported them rather than waiting for implementation in directx, which pushed faster adoption by the entire industry. They deserve praise for not only implementing the feature-set and getting it out there, but their execution which resulted in pushing the entire industry forward.
It seems to me Mantle will still serve as a platform where (future) features supported by hardware but not yet directx will allow developers to implement them. That is incredibly smart, imho. Imagine if we come across another tesselation/GPGPU/HDR/etc feature, the developer no longer has to wait to implement it (especially through greater abstraction/generic implimentation).I think to some people, the dream is still alive that many games will somehow either be ported, or somehow simultaneously compiled in OPENGL because SteamOS. I totally get where you're coming from, but I would argue that is it's relevance outside mobile.
"The company intends to "develop", maintain and support Mantle and its eco-system, while maintaining that it will participate in the development and support of industry-standard APIs"
From what I am reading it looks like they are supporting other a.p.i.'s while taking mantle on a diff path Mantle1.1?
"Mantle must take on new capabilities and evolve beyond mastery of the draw call. It will continue to serve AMD as a graphics innovation platform available to select partners with custom needs"
so yeah, quite a bit still uses openGL.
EDIT: ps4, according to naughty dog, does not use openGL. It has its own API
P.S. I hope you are joking with bringing cell phone games up to this discussion. Noone gives a flying f.. about that.
Gamer’s and DirectX is still the one niche that draw to their OS. Lose that and what is Windows, seems like the emperor has no cloths. What if a Low level API could arise and running with Lunix, how may gamers would be purchasing a copy (worse yet subscription based) of Win10? I almost see the without Dx12; M-$ would have nothing much left to cause people to purchase their OS.
Something has to be seen: MS is not that innovative and if things were left just to them, I'm 100% certain DX12 wouldn't be what it is and will be. Every gamer owes AMD thanks for pushing the boundaries and setting the stage for what will come with DX12.
If they can keep doing this with future iterations of Mantle, they can help enable other interesting features and capabilities become part of future iterations of DX12 and DX in general.
So, kudos to AMD, is all I can say.
Which came first, Mantle or DX12?, is an inconsequential question. What matters is that things are progressing in DX, and it would be just unfair to deny the role of AMD's efforts in that.
www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html
yeah they have been for a long time.. like tomb raider among many other games will run nearly the same on a 750k as a i7.
like they just took optimizations from the best game engines then baked them into mantle and got everyone to follow with cool next gen marketing.
lots of hype for things many developers where already doing with dx11 but yeah I think I can agree that gamers owe a little thanks to amd for setting a better standard.