In a blog post detailing the release of OpenCL 2.2 with SPIR-V 1.2 integration today, Khronos put in an interesting tidbit, saying that "we are also working to converge with, and leverage, the Khronos Vulkan API - merging advanced graphics and compute into a single API." PC Perspective understandably found this worth further looking into, since as it is phrased, it seems as if OpenCL and Vulkan are going to be slowly developed towards parity (until eventually merging with it.)

Khrono's response to PC Perspective's inquiry was clear enough: "The OpenCL working group has taken the decision to converge its roadmap with Vulkan, and use Vulkan as the basis for the next generation of explicit compute APIs - this also provides the opportunity for the OpenCL roadmap to merge graphics and compute."

Futuremark has just released a major update to its 3DMark benchmarking suite, adding Vulkan support while simultaneously axing its cousin, Mantle. This means that the API Overhead test now uses a Vulkan path instead of its previous Mantle one, which is sure to lead several enthusiasts into a frenzy of benchmarking under the Khronos's API (which has just recently been announced will offer support for multi-GPU in Windows 10, 8.x, 7, and Linux operating systems.)

Check some of the new features, improvements and fixes on the new version right after the break. You can download this piece of software right here on TPU - just follow the link below.Download: Futuremark 3DMark + TimeSpy v2.3.3663

At GDC's AMD Capsaicin Event, AMD's Raja Koduri reaffirmed Radeon's commitment to Multi-GPU setups by remembering his RX 480 launch event claim on a RX 480 dual setup beating their competition's high-end solutions. Then, Rebellion's Chris Kingsley took stage, who attributed the fact that his team was able to get Sniper Elite 4 to run with 100% scaling on a RX 480 dual GPU setup to Rebellion's previous work with Mantle. Next to it, for perspective, AMD showed a dual-GPU RX 480 system running the same game and settings at virtually double the frame rate - a perfect, 100% scaling. Rebellion's Chris Kingsley also elaborated on the importance of DX 12 and Vulkan on making such a thing even possible in the first place, reiterating the software and coding investment necessary to make that happen.

Shader intrinsic functions stand as a partial solution for granting developers more control over existing computational resources and how they are leveraged. This capability (much touted by AMD as a performance-enhancing feature on their GCN-based products) essentially exposes features and capabilities that exist on the hardware developers are programming for, but wouldn't generally be able to access. This can happen either because they're being abstracted by a high-level API (Application Programming Interface, like DX11), or because the API isn't functionally able to access them. To understand why high-level APIs such as DX11 don't usually offer support for a piece of hardware's full feature list, or full processing capabilities, we must first look at the basic architecture of a given computer system.

Vulkan, the new-generation cross-platform 3D graphics API governed by the people behind OpenGL, the Khronos Group, is gaining in relevance, with Google making it the primary 3D graphics API for Android. AMD said that it's actively promoting the API. Responding to a question by TechPowerUp in its recent Radeon Technology Group (RTG) first anniversary presser, its chief Raja Koduri agreed that the company is actively working with developers to add Vulkan to their productions, and optimize them for Radeon GPUs. This, we believe, could be due to one of many strategic reasons.

First, Vulkan works inherently better on AMD Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture because it's been largely derived from Mantle, a now defunct 3D graphics API by AMD that brings a lot of "close-to-metal" API features that make game consoles more performance-efficient, over to the PC ecosystem. The proof of this pudding is the AAA title and 2016 reboot of the iconic first-person shooter "Doom," in which Radeon GPUs get significant performance boosts switching from the default OpenGL renderer to Vulkan. These boosts aren't as pronounced on NVIDIA GPUs.

AMD announced its first public beta driver featuring support for the Vulkan API. The company is a major contributor to the development of the API, since most of it is based on its Mantle code. Version 16.15.1009 supports Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. All of AMD's Graphics CoreNext based GPUs and APUs support Vulkan. This includes the company's Radeon HD 7700 series thru HD 7900 series; R9/R7 200 series, R9/R7 300 series, the R9 Fury series, and AMD APUs based on the "Godavari" and "Carrizo" silicons. This driver comes just in time for the Vulkan release of The Talos Principle.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Beta for Vulkan

NVIDIA talked Vulkan in its latest GeForce blog post, announcing that your GeForce GTX graphics card already supports the "industry forged" API. NVIDIA is offering Vulkan hardware-acceleration on its "Kepler" and "Maxwell" GPU architectures at this time, and on Windows 7 and above; PC Linux, and Android. NVIDIA is all praises for Vulkan's low-latency and high-efficiency pathways, which streamline the process of drawing graphics.

Vulkan makes its big mainstream debut with a major update to "The Talos Principle," by Croteam (the people behind the "Serious Sam" franchise). This update adds a Vulkan renderer to the game, and ships later today. NVIDIA has an driver ready with the Vulkan API, which you can download from here. Maintained by the Khronos Group, Vulkan is a successor to OpenGL, although it's built from the ground up, with a major chunk of its code being contributed by AMD, from its Mantle API.

NVIDIA is preparing to add support for Vulkan, the upcoming 3D graphics API by Khronos, and successor to OpenGL, to its feature-set. The company's upcoming GeForce 358.66 series driver will introduce support for Vulkan. What makes matters particularly interesting is the API itself. Vulkan is heavily based on AMD's Mantle API, which the company gracefully retired in favor of DirectX 12, and committed its code to Khronos. The 358 series drivers also reportedly feature function declarations in their CUDA code for upcoming NVIDIA GPU architectures, such as Pascal and Volta.

AMD released its latest Catalyst software update. Version 15.9 Beta brings you game optimizations for Star Wars Battlefront Beta, and Fable Legends. It also resolves an issue where DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0) support was not being reported by DXDIAG on supported Radeon graphics cards; a Dragon Age: Inquisition related bug in Mantle API mode; and frame-stutter in Assassin's Creed Unity, in CrossFire mode. Some issues related to BenQ's 144 Hz FreeSync monitors were also fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 15.9 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit

AMD has halted optimizations for its Mantle 3D graphics API, for current and future graphics cards. The cards will retain Mantle API support at the driver-level, to run existing Mantle applications, but will not receive any performance optimizations from AMD. Launched around 2013, Mantle had a short stint with AAA PC games, such as Battlefield 4, Thief, Sniper Elite III, and Star Citizen, offering noticeably higher performance than DirectX 11. The API improves the way the CPU-end of 3D graphics rendering is handled, particularly with today's multi-core/multi-threaded processors, bringing about significant increases to the number of draw-calls that can be parsed by a GPU.

AMD will now focus on DirectX 12 and Vulkan (OpenGL successor by Khronos Group). Why the company effectively killed its own 2-year old and promising 3D API is anyone's guess. We postulate that Mantle could have been used by AMD to steer Microsoft to introduce vital bare-metal optimizations it reserved for the console, to the PC ecosystem with DirectX 12. It appears to have served that purpose, and as if to hold up to its end of a bargain, AMD 'withdrew' Mantle. DirectX 12 will feature a super-efficient command-buffer that scales across any number of CPU cores, and will have huge increases in draw-calls over DirectX 11. The new API makes its official debut with Windows 10, later this month. AMD's Graphics CoreNext 1.1 and 1.2 GPUs support DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0), as do rival NVIDIA's "Maxwell" GPUs. The company will continue to nurture Mantle as an "innovation base" for its upcoming tech, such as LiquidVR.

The future starts today. Get ready for a giant leap forward when it comes to the pinnacle of GPU engineering. Get ready for the revolutionary Club 3D Radeon R9 Fury X. The world's first graphics card featuring AMD-pioneered High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for extreme performance in the highest resolutions. Benefit from an improved Graphics Core Next architecture, more advanced PowerTune management, improved connection flexibility enabling a 6K gaming setup with multiple monitors and a world class, whisper quiet Closed Loop Liquid Cooling Solution. The Club 3D Radeon R9 Fury X is the fastest GPU in the world and it's here to take your gaming performance to a completely new dimension.

Take the lead with the awesome gaming power of the most advanced and innovative GPU ever created for PC gaming. The Club 3D Radeon R9 Fury X is the world's first graphics card to feature AMD-pioneered High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) integrated on-chip, delivering 60% more memory bandwidth over GDDR5 memory. With 4K Stream Processors, 4K MB High Bandwidth Memory, 4K Bit memory interface aimed at providing the best 4K gaming experience, Fury X marks the beginning of a new era in PC Gaming.

AMD today announced its 6th Generation A-Series Processor, the world's first high-performance Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) in a System-on-Chip (SoC) design. Previously codenamed "Carrizo," the 6th Generation AMD A-Series Processor takes advantage of extensive AMD processor and graphics IP enabling exceptional computing experiences not possible before. The 6th Generation AMD A-Series Processor is the most versatile notebook processor ever produced, built to excel at today's and tomorrow's consumer and business applications, delivering premium streaming entertainment, unmatched smooth online gaming, and innovative computing experiences, with all day unplugged performance.

The world's first high-performance Accelerated Processing Unit in a SoC design marks a number of technology firsts: the world's first High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) hardware decode support for notebooks, the first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0-compliant design, and the first ARM TrustZone-capable high-performance APU. The new processor harnesses up to 12 Compute Cores -- 4 CPU + 8 GPU -- leveraging AMD "Excavator" cores and the third generation of AMD's award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The result is a groundbreaking processor that boasts more than twice the battery life of its predecessor, up to 2x faster gaming performance than competitive processors, innovative computing experiences enabled through HSA, and a premium Microsoft Windows 10 experience with support for DirectX 12, adding up to an extraordinary experience for consumers.

Futuremark is excited to introduce our new 3DMark API Overhead feature test - the world's first independent test for measuring differences in DirectX 12, DirectX 11 and Mantle API performance. It's also the very first public application to use DirectX 12 full stop. This is cutting edge stuff! Developed with input from AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and the other members of our Benchmark Development Program, the 3DMark API Overhead feature test lets you compare the performance of DirectX 12, DirectX 11, and Mantle.

The purpose of the test is to compare the relative performance of different APIs on a single system, rather than the absolute performance of different systems. The API Overhead feature test is not a general-purpose GPU benchmark, and it should not be used to compare graphics cards from different vendors. (We are working on a DirectX 12 benchmark with game-like workloads, which we expect to release soon after the public launch of Windows 10.)

DOWNLOAD: Futuremark 3DMark v1.5.884

In an industry presentation on why the company is excited about Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 12 API, AMD revealed its most important feature that could impact on not only its graphics business, but also potentially revive its CPU business among gamers. DirectX 12 will make its debut with Windows 10, Microsoft's next big operating system, which will be given away as a free upgrade for _all_ current Windows 8 and Windows 7 users. The OS will come with a usable Start menu, and could lure gamers who stood their ground on Windows 7.

In its presentation, AMD touched upon two key features of the DirectX 12, starting with its most important, Multi-threaded command buffer recording; and Asynchronous compute scheduling/execution. A command buffer is a list of tasks for the CPU to execute, when drawing a 3D scene. There are some elements of 3D graphics that are still better suited for serial processing, and no single SIMD unit from any GPU architecture has managed to gain performance throughput parity with a modern CPU core. DirectX 11 and its predecessors are still largely single-threaded on the CPU, in the way it schedules command buffer.

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).

AMD gave us a technical preview of its next-generation "Carrizo" APU, which is perhaps the company's biggest design leap since "Trinity." Built on the 28 nm silicon fab process, this chip offers big energy-efficiency gains over the current-generation "Kaveri" silicon, thanks to some major under-the-hood changes.

The biggest of these is the "Excavator" CPU module. 23 percent smaller in area than "Steamroller," (same 28 nm process), Excavator features a new high-density library design, which reduces die-area of the module. Most components are compacted. The floating-point scheduler is 38% smaller, fused multiply-accumulate (FMAC) units compacted by 35%, and instruction-cache controller compacted by another 35%. The "Carrizo" silicon itself uses GPU-optimized high-density metal stack, which helps with the compaction. Each "Excavator" module features two x86-64 CPU cores, which are structured much in the same way as AMD's previous three CPU core generations.

AMD today announced that qualifying purchases from participating retailers of an AMD Radeon R9 295X2, R9 290X or R9 290 graphics card will be eligible for a complimentary copy of 2K's Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth.

"I personally have enjoyed more than 500 hours of game time with the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise, and I'm thrilled by what AMD and Firaxis Games have done with the Mantle graphics API to make Beyond Earth a smooth, high-performance marvel," said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, ISV/IHV Partner Group, AMD. "AMD believes that gamers should freely experience that remarkable development work, and our new Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth promotion offers exactly that as a 'thank you' to new AMD Radeon customers."

AMD today joins Firaxis Games in celebrating the release of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, which features day-one support for AMD's Mantle graphics API to enable top gaming performance for AMD Radeon graphics customers.

"AMD Radeon GPUs with Mantle are over a year ahead of other graphics companies in delivering high-throughput, high-efficiency graphics to gamers and developers," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Product and Platform Solutions Business Unit, AMD. "As gamers settle in for a marathon session of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, we're proud that the potent combination of Mantle and the award-winning Graphics Core Next architecture effortlessly enable the definitive experience."

AMD rolled out the Catalyst 14.9 WHQL driver suite, its quarterly release of WHQL-signed drivers for AMD Radeon discrete- and integrated GPUs. The drivers add support for some of the newer Radeon GPUs, such as the R9 285; and introduce a large list of game-specific performance improvements. The drivers also introduce AMD Eyefinity mixed-resolution modes, Eyefinity display alignment, new video-color and display settings in Catalyst Control Center, an updated AMD Mantle API runtime, and JPEG decoding acceleration for certain GPUs.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 14.9 WHQL for Windows 8.1/7/Vista 64-bit | AMD Catalyst 14.9 WHQL for Windows 8.1/7/Vista 32-bit

The change-log follows.

AMD announced its most important GPU for the season, the Radeon R9 285. The chip is designed to compete with the GeForce GTX 760 from NVIDIA at not just performance, but also energy-efficiency, and low component costs, so AMD can price it better. Based on a brand new 28 nm silicon by the company, codenamed "Tonga," the R9 285 features 1,792 Graphics CoreNext 1.2 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory.

AMD partners are free to come up with 4 GB variants. The card supports DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.4, and Mantle. It features new AMD innovations, such as XDMA CrossFire, TrueAudio DSP, and 4-display Eyefinity by plugging into every connector on the card (two dual-link DVI, one DisplayPort 1.2, and one HDMI 1.4a). The card draws power from a pair of 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Available now, the Radeon R9 285, from various AMD partners starts at US $249.

AMD production manager Devon Nekechuk, speaking at the company's 30 Years of Graphics event, disclosed that all AMD GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture will support DirectX 12, Microsoft's next generation multimedia API. The company is already up-to-date on the DirectX feature-level support, with support for DirectX 11.2. The company isn't drumming that up too loud, probably because it's developing an ecosystem for its own/competing AMD Mantle 3D API.

AMD unveiled a new mid-range APU to take on Intel's Core i3 "Haswell" processors, the A10-7800 (model: AD7800YBI44JA). Based on the 28 nm "Kaveri" silicon, and built in the socket FM2+ package, this part differs from the A10-7850K in lacking an unlocked CPU base clock multiplier, and a rated TDP of just 65W (compared to the former's 95W). The A10-7800 features four x86-64 cores based on the "Steamroller" micro-architecture, spread across two modules, featuring 4 MB (2x 2 MB) of L2 cache; clocked at 3.50 GHz, with a TurboCore frequency of 3.90 GHz. Also featured is Radeon R7 Series integrated GPU featuring 512 GCN2 cores, with support for AMD Mantle and DirectX 11.2. Its uncore component features a dual-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, with support for DDR3-1866 MHz, and a PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex. It's expected to be priced between US $140 and $150.

AMD is pleased to announce that Electronic Arts (EA) will support Mantle, AMD's groundbreaking graphics API, in three new games: Battlefield Hardline, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. These join an extensive catalogue of more than 40 games that now support AMD's revolutionary graphics API. All three of these games are powered by DICE's cutting-edge engine, Frostbite 3.

The latest title from the Battlefield series, Battlefield Hardline follows Nick Mendoza's journey on a cross-country vendetta against once-trusted colleagues of the force.

AMD's big score for this Summer, Sniper Elite III has been added to the list of "Silver" and "Gold" rewards, which new AMD Radeon buyers can choose from, as part of their Never Settle Forever offer. Sniper Elite III builds on the success of the popular recon shooter game Sniper Elite V2, by providing bigger maps, more detailed environments, with even more ways to approach your objectives. In addition to DirectX 11, the game can take advantage of AMD's Mantle API, and should be playable on even entry-level AMD Radeon-based solutions, such as A-series "Kaveri" APUs. The game's Mantle renderer makes it take advantage of as many as 8 CPU cores. The game ships with 64-bit binaries, and should take advantage of large amounts of system and video memory. Up for pre-order on Steam for $39.99, Sniper Elite III releases on the 27th of June, 2014.

AMD has now let loose a new graphics card driver, a fresh Catalyst build which brings performance enhancements for games like Watch Dogs and Murdered Soul Suspect, plus Eyefinity and Mantle improvements.

The Catalyst 14.6 Beta is available for Windows 7 and 8.1 (8.0 users will have to update to 8.1 if they want to install it) and supports Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, HD 7000, HD 8000, R5 200, R7 200 and R9 200 Series desktop cards, and Mobility Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, HD 6000M, HD 7000M and HD 8000M mobile GPUs.