Doing the work for everyone
In our industry, one of the toughest decisions we continually face is how open we should be with our technology. On the one hand, developing cutting-edge graphics technology requires enormous investments. On the other hand, too much emphasis on keeping technologies proprietary can hinder broad adoption.
It’s a dilemma we face practically every day, which is why we decided some time ago that those decisions would be guided by a basic principle: our goal is to support moving the industry forward as a whole, and that we’re proud to take a leadership position to help achieve that goal.
The latest example of that philosophy is our work with dynamic refresh rates, currently codenamed "Project FreeSync”. Screen tearing is a persistent nuisance for gamers, and vertical synchronization (v-sync) is an imperfect fix. There are a few ways the problem can be solved, but there are very specific reasons why we’re pursuing the route of using industry standards.
The most obvious reason is ease of implementation, both for us from a corporate perspective and also for gamers who face the cost of upgrading their hardware. But the more important reason is that it’s consistent with our philosophy of making sure that the gaming industry keeps marching forward at a steady pace that benefits
everyone.
It sometimes takes longer to do things that way — lots of stakeholders need to coordinate their efforts — but we know it’s ultimately the best way forward. This strategy enables technologies to proliferate faster and cost less, and that’s good for everyone.
The same philosophy explains why we’re revealing technology that’s still in the development stage. Now’s our chance to get feedback from industry, media and users, to make sure we develop the right features for the market. That’s what it takes to develop a technology that actually delivers on consumers’ expectations.
And Project FreeSync isn’t the only example of this philosophy and its payoffs. We worked across the industry to first bring GDDR5 memory to graphics cards— an innovation with industry-wide benefits. And when game developers came to us demanding a low-level API, we listened to them and developed Mantle. It’s an innovation that we hope will speed the evolution of industry-standard APIs in the future.
We’re passionate about gaming, and we know that the biggest advancements come when all industry players collaborate. There’s no room for proprietary technologies when you have a mission to accomplish. That’s why we do the work we do, and if we can help move the industry forward we’re proud to do it for everyone.
