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My first thought when I saw the slides, especially the "cross-platform part", was "yay, no more DirectX!!!". This might mean that we're finally going to have AAA games on Linux too (DirectX was a big obstacle to that).
Mantle still doesn't solve input, audio, and a number of other services that DirectX provides in a unified way. Also, potentially AMD only, which has a smaller share than both Intel and nVidia.
My first thought when I saw the slides, especially the "cross-platform part", was "yay, no more DirectX!!!". This might mean that we're finally going to have AAA games on Linux too (DirectX was a big obstacle to that).
- No more drivers second guessing you.
- Speed
Cons:
- OpenGL/DirectX Drivers actually re-write the code stream and fix existing bugs from developers for specific game/versions. This is useful for the ecosystem because AMD/NVIDIA know more about 3D than most devs and how to be performant.
- It also really means NVIDIA will do the same if this catches on and now there will need to be at least two different supported implementations for anyone going down this route (prob amd + nvidia + {opengl, dx}). Changing out the 3d driver to be pluggable in a backend-agnostic way will be extremely hard/annoying to code around.
According to http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-amd-launches-mantle-api-t... : "We've been told at the GPU14 Tech Day event that the Mantle API is open, so theoretically Nvidia could purpose the technology in their GPUs." How feasible that is in reality is of course up for question. And I doubt that nVidia would be willing to implement an AMD-controlled API.
They can, but it may require a change to their hardware (we don't know yet). And if they do follow AMD's lead here to catch up on performance gains, AMD is in control of the API so they know exactly what's going to change when. Major coup for AMD. This is a CUDA that will affect all gamers.
major coup for AMD. This is a CUDA that will affect all gamers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mantle still doesn't solve input, audio, and a number of other services that DirectX provides in a unified way. Also, potentially AMD only, which has a smaller share than both Intel and nVidia.
100% share of the next-gen console though, which is what counts for gaming.
If you develop for PC you want to maximize market share so you need to ask if it's really worth supporting another graphics API for a performance boost on the #3 vendor.
This sounds like 3Dfx and Glide all over again. I do not miss those days.
This is not for performance. OpenGL has very low overhead, and already allows you to "directly tap into the hardware" and "fully exploit the capabilities of modern GPUs". AMD wants people to write code that will not run on Nvidia and Intel hardware. Nvidia has been doing the same thing for years with CUDA.
Follow some of the top-end OpenGL developers on Twitter sometime; you'll change your tune quickly. There's a significant amount of overhead in the existing OpenGL API, which currently can only be mitigated somewhat through vendor-specific extensions. But extensions alone aren't sufficient to address some of the serious issues that the OpenGL API has today. OpenGL forces you to maintain a tremendous amount of state in…
This is the huge benefit with the console wins to AMD that Carmack spoke about at Quakecon this year. Sounds like thanks to the new consoles, this will put AMD in the driver's seat. Everyone else will be stuck on DX or OGL. If NV/Intel implements Mantle it may well require a hardware change, since AMD defines this API going forward.
And if the benefits of the api are so great as claimed than performance could go so high that for 1080p it will just don't matter if nVidia is slightly slower.
It is funny that Valve and AMD do for PC gaming what I claimed in 2001-2 MS should do - I called it game mode then. Unload everything but the TCP/IP stack and give all the resources to a game.
Pros: - No more drivers second guessing you. - Speed Cons: - OpenGL/DirectX Drivers actually re-write the code stream and fix existing bugs from developers for specific game/versions. This is useful for the ecosystem because AMD/NVIDIA know more about 3D than most devs and how to be performant. - It also really means NVIDIA will do the same if this catches on and now there will need to be at least two different suppo…
I hear that the Gallium3D project has done a substantial part of that work already:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What, and people haven't been ragging on and even trying to replace OpenGL for years? Everyone used the GPU-specific API rather than OpenGL on PS3 to make it harder to port their code, not to get the maximum possible performance? The "leading game developers" that allegedly inspired Mantle aren't going to show? Standards are great, and I'd love OpenGL drivers to be as fast as possible, but OpenGL being what it is, th…
libgcm is pretty much just OpenGL with a few Sony specific extensions - plus you have to use their headers which use macros to build the command lists, probably pulled right out of NVidia's driver code. It's quite fascinating how many of the PS3's APIs are wrappers around established standards/libraries, almost as if they were deliberately crafted to require more porting effort from developers.