Future of AMD Mantle API

This is very interesting. And probably describes the future of known APIs.

From Guru3D:

On the AMD blog they have released a 450-page programming guide for its Mantle 3D graphics API + the reference API, the company said it will talk about the future of Mantle in its GDC presentation. AMD remains developing and supporting Mantle, while maintaining that it will participate in the development and support of industry-standard APIs such as DirectX 12 and GLnext.

You can access both releases here. BTW read the part in BOLD .. very curious as AMD suggests to focus on DX12 over Mantle. IS AMD declaring Mantle 1.0 a dead ship in the water as DX12 offers all you guys needs ? If so, still respect to AMD for developing Mantle, as they started this race to get more out of your processor and into your gaming experience.

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AMD's Mantle Graphics API has gathered incredible momentum in its first year, gaining support from five advanced game engines and 10 premium applications.

Mantle has also revolutionized the industry's thinking on low-overhead/high-throughput graphics APIs as solutions that do not compromise developer productivity. Compelling content was delivered on Mantle in historically quick time, paving the way for various graphics standards bodies to move forward with conviction on their own similar API standards and specifications.

We are proud of these accomplishments, and we have been inspired by everything we have learned along the way. We also haven’t forgotten the promise we made: openness.

AMD is a company that fundamentally believes in technologies unfettered by restrictive contracts, licensing fees, vendor lock-ins or other arbitrary hurdles to solving the big challenges in graphics and computing. Mantle was destined to follow suit, and it does so today as we proudly announce that the 450-page programming guide and API reference for Mantle will be available this month (March, 2015) at www.amd.com/mantle.

This documentation will provide developers with a detailed look at the capabilities we’ve implemented and the design decisions we made, and we hope it will stimulate more discussion that leads to even better graphics API standards in the months and years ahead.

Proud moments also call for reflection, and today we are especially thoughtful about Mantle’s future. In the approaching era of DirectX® 12 and the Next-Generation OpenGL Initiative, AMD is helping to develop two incredibly powerful APIs that leverage many capabilities of the award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture.

AMD’s game development partners have similarly started to shift their focus, so it follows that 2015 will be a transitional year for Mantle. Our loyal customers are naturally curious about what this transition might entail, and we wanted to share some thoughts with you on where we will be taking Mantle next

1. AMD will continue to support our trusted partners that have committed to Mantle in future projects, like Battlefield™ Hardline, with all the resources at our disposal.
2. Mantle’s definition of “open” must widen. It already has, in fact. This vital effort has replaced our intention to release a public Mantle SDK, and you will learn the facts on Thursday, March 5 at GDC 2015.
3. 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.
   1. The Mantle SDK also remains available to partners who register in this co-development and evaluation program. However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle "1.0" functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX® 12 or GLnext.

As an API born to tackle the big challenges in graphics, much of this evolution is already well under way. We invite you to join AMD this week at Game Developer Conference 2015 to see not just the future of Mantle, but the future of PC graphics itself.

Raja Koduri is Vice President of Visual and Perceptual Computing

at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

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I think that DX12 and GLN are so advanced that AMD will not bother for RnD in Mantle, in order to reach the other two.

That will also make AMD to focus more on DX12 (and GLN) and make their GPUs run faster on it.

edit: Two more sites have posted it as news:

Videocardz: AMD speaks on the future of Mantle and other APIs

WCCFtech: AMD Ends Revolutionary Mantle API 1.0, Asks Devs To Focus On DirectX 12 Instead – Releasing 450 Page Programming Guide For Developers, No Public SDK

edit2: Now that the devs will have an API (mostly DX12) that will make the life easier for them (no need for SLI/CF development on the game etc etc...) and PC Gaming as the most profitable gaming platform (the image below), I expect more AAA love for PC.

:)

"Mantle 1.0" LOL! Original Mantle only has like, 5 games. To be honest, I could care less about Mantle (specially with DX12) being almost here.

AMD's Mantle will fade away once Direct x 12 and the new GL releases. Developers do not like having to code for multiple API's, they will use the lowest common denominator that works with every brand type.DX12 allows the same type of features and performance gains that mantle introduced. AMD is going to have to promote and pay for games to use Mantle.

@04dcarraher: Well I think with this official document from AMD, they are abandoning Mantle API, so there is no reason to promote it.

However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle "1.0" functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX® 12 or GLnext.

And financial is a wise decision since its waste of money trying to compete with an almost 50 times bigger company with such a huge power/influence which historically beat a bigger threat than AMD (3Dfx had 85% of GPU market and they still lost the API fight).

It's a shame, though - it did/does big things for the games that support it

Smart move on their part. Got to give AMD credit for getting the ball rolling and putting pressure on the other API developers. Everyone benefits from what they started.

@BassMan: i was about to say the same thing. it looks like its going to be retired which is the correct thing to do. But mantle was worthwhile as it gave everyone a big kick in the backside. vulkan and DX12 should be good additions to have for developers now.

so mission accomplished. the only reason to persist with mantle is if DX12 and vulkan did not solve the problems mantle solves.

now if only nvidia could to the same and stop with all this custom nvidia only nonsense.

Unfortunately there is no way for Mantle to compete against DX12, but they indeed pushed it forward and should be commended for it.

dx12 works on amd or nvidia gpus. I dont see how any gaming developer would waste time on it when they could achieve more with dx12 and have both gpu brands covered.

That they did. From what I understand, Khronus took the "best pieces" of Mantle for use in the next version of OpenGL, or Vulkan.

http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/03/one-of-mantles-futures-vulkan

"Since the advent of Mantle, gamers widely believed that Mantle would become an industry-standard graphics API or, at the very least, inspire successors that would offer similarly powerful benefits to hardware beyond AMD Radeon™ graphics. Many hoped that Mantle would come to OSes beyond Windows, too. These voices weren’t wrong: those were our goals, too!

The recent arrival of those oh-so-inspired successors has subsequently honed this chatter to one question: “What does Mantle do now?” AMD has cryptically replied—with very good reason—that Mantle’s destiny is openness and coexistence. Today we’re ready to be clear on one aspect of what that means.

The cross-vendor Khronos Group has chosen the best and brightest parts of Mantle to serve as the foundation for “Vulkan,” the exciting next version of the storied OpenGL API.

WHAT THIS MEANS

OpenGL has long and deservedly commanded respect for being a fast, versatile and wide open API that works on all graphics vendors across multiple operating systems.

Meanwhile, Mantle has seen acclaim for many improvements in gaming and game development: higher framerates, reduced rendering latency, reduced GPU power consumption, better use of multi-core CPUs, and re-pioneering new features like split-frame rendering.

Vulkan combines and extensively iterates on these characteristics as one new and uniquely powerful graphics API. And as the product of an incredible collaboration between many industry hardware and software vendors, Vulkan paves the way for a renaissance in cross-platform and cross-vendor PC games with exceptional performance, image quality and features.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFO

“Open” and “flexible” technologies are an essential piece of AMD’s DNA, and we have a long history in supporting those ideals. Our co-development of the Vulkan API through contributions like Mantle is another chapter in that open technology tale for AMD, an exciting evolution of Mantle, and a big step forward for PC gamers alike.""

@Coseniath:

Vulkan vs Mantle .

Vulkan is a German name for Volcano which is based from Mantle.

AMD seems to be the biggest contributor towards Vulkan. Having a common efficient API across all platforms with suitable vendor specific extensions would be great for gaming in general.

Note that Mantle was reborn as Vulkun.

@ronvalencia: Nothing changed. If Vulkan decide to go against Microsoft (DX12) we will have the same result as 3Dfx had and as AMD had.

And now that Mantle's official death is not like 10-15 years ago like Glide, I doubt there will be a lot of devs that will want to spend time and sources in order their game to be able to use an API that will last a little (Mantle was around 1 years old?). Even AMD advises them not to...

Khronos Vulkan is not here to replace DX12. There is no power in Earth that can do this at the moment.

What Vulkan has as an advantage over Mantle is that it will have the support of Nvidia too. Like OpenGL. :)

Respect AMD ! and i hope DX 12 Well deliver !

Vulkan is GLnext or the next major OpenGL release. AMD Mantle is mostly for fixing AMD's CPU business with a software solution.

Vulkan's partners includes Apple which could mean Metal is also dead.

What's Vulkun? Joking :P

I know that Vulkan is GLN, my last sentence was more like a sarcasm, thats why I placed a smile in the end :P.

I disagree about Mantle. Mantle would fix AMD's CPU business if it was given to Nvidia too. What's the point to refer only to the 25% of PCs in order to boost ur CPU sales?

Zen is the answer to AMD's CPU business.

Actually Vulkan's partners are:

Vulkan has a future as an OpenGL successor.

@Coseniath:

AMD Zen hasn't proven itself on fixing AMD's CPU business, while DirectX12 or Vulkan has shown promise to bring AMD FX CPU lines back into competitive range i.e. FX8xxx was enough to drive two R9-290X in a competitive performance.

@ronvalencia: True. DX12 and Vulkan wil help a lot with the parallel CPU proccessing.

But AMD has already decided that Bulldozer was a fail architecture and they are focusing on Zen.

DX12 will give FX's some performance but do not expect miracles. AMD's best server CPU (16 cores) is loosing at multithreaded server applications from even Intel's 8 cored HEDT CPU (5960X).

But at least it will compete with i5 and not loosing against i3 in some games...

Intel Haswell CPU core includes four integer units i.e. Intel designed a better "Bulldozer" with excellent multithreading AND single thread performance.

Intel Haswell CPU core is wide enough to handle two 256bit AVX instructions per cycle while AMD FX module can only handle one 256bit AVX instruction per cycle.

Well I think anyone can see that Intel's CPU designs are better... :P

AVX instructions and AVX2.0 instructions can provide more performance but it needs two things.

Firstly they need a CPU to support it. Haswell has support for AVX2.0 and Bulldozer/Piledriver has support for AVX.

Secondly they need from the programme to use them. If the programme will not use them, then they are useless (like in gaming).

I wouldn't be surprised if 5960X won multithreaded benchmarks where AVX2.0 would be used since it provides twiice performance against AVX.

But the programmes were not using AVX instructions. (which they heat up the CPU to the skies :P)

edit: AVX2.0 has 32 SP and 16 DP FLOPs per cycle per core, where AVX has half with 16 and 8...