A few relevant notes from AMD's Twitter at @AMDRadeon:<p>- Collaboration between AMD and DICE/EA<p>- The Frostbite engine, used in Battlefield 4, "will use "Mantle" low-level API instead of DX11 on compatible Radeon GPUs."<p>- "Mantle enables 9x more draw calls per second than any other APIs by reducing CPU overhead - works with all GCN GPUs!"
Pros:<p>- No more drivers second guessing you.<p>- Speed<p>Cons:<p>- 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.<p>- 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.
Two years old article basically talking about this:<p><a href="http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/1" rel="nofollow">http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewel...</a>
According to <a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-amd-launches-mantle-api-to-optimize-pc-gpu-performance.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-amd-launches-mantle-api-t...</a>: "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."<p>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.
Live blogger: <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product-showcase-live-blog" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product-showcase-...</a>
I wonder how they are planning to do forward/backward compatibility? If Mantle catches on, will it constraint HW development due its low-level nature?
VOD of the announcement is available here: <a href="http://www.livestream.com/amdlivestream/video?clipId=pla_33493acd-ba7b-4917-8caf-ff204913625b" rel="nofollow">http://www.livestream.com/amdlivestream/video?clipId=pla_334...</a>.<p>Mantle information starts at 02:26:40.
This could be an opportunity for AMD considering they ship the GPU for both the new XBox and PS4 and Wii U. But Carmack suspects that MS and Sony won't like it because it could boost Steambox.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/383047595725037568" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/383047595725037568</a><p>> AMD has an interesting opportunity with Mantle because of their dual console wins, but I doubt Sony and MS will be very helpful.<p>and<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/383051142755663872" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/383051142755663872</a><p>> Considering the boost Mantle could give to a steambox, MS and Sony may wind up being downright hostile to it.
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.
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).
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".<p>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.