AMD Mantle Programming Guide and Reference API

GreenAlien

2015-03-03 12:36

I think the most interesting line is this one "Mantle must take on new capabilities and evolve beyond mastery of the draw call." It implies that there is some additional functionality in the works, that will set Mantle apart from DX12 and has nothing to do with draw call reduction. Is it in some way going to increase performance or more of a focus on ease of development or something else?

#5022991

Spets

2015-03-03 12:55

You can also argue that Windows 10 was only going to be DirectX 11.3, and that the DirectX 12 API was added as a feature after work on Mantle had begun 😉.

DX11.3 is for the inexperienced programmers, luckily the larger engines are taking on DX12. Kind of hard to argue that when MS and Nv said they had been working on DX12 for a long time and have a working demo a month after Mantle was announced. Let alone shutting down AMD's claims that there is no DX12 earlier on.

#5022993

pbvider

2015-03-03 13:03

Until recently AMD really had no clue about DX12 - that's the only way to make sense out of why they decided to go with the whole Mantle initiative "The computer industry has benefited over the years from the constant updating of DirectX. Over and over again a new DirectX has refreshed the industry; new graphics cards need more powerful processors and more RAM. But there will be no DirectX 12.That's it. To our knowledge there are no plans for DirectX 12 If someone wants to correct me - wonderful." AMD - No DirectX 12

That only shows that AMD was left outside in DX12 development.

#5022997

Noisiv

2015-03-03 13:13

That only shows that AMD was left outside in DX12 development.

But then why would MS keep AMD out of the loop? Or perhaps AMD did not learn about DX12 until it was too late. And perhaps AMD did not think MS is serious, and then when Mantle was released MS got even more serious its all very strange and confusing

#5023017

PinchedNerve

2015-03-03 14:42

Mantle was created to make AMD's insanely hot running, power hungry v-cards look better in benchmarks, that's all.

#5023018

Humanoid_1

2015-03-03 14:46

AMD brought a low level API to existing versions of Windows, at time when Microsoft seemingly does jack **** for games on PC. That's all I care about. If DX12 and OpenGL takes off, all the merrier. But I hope AMD carries on with Mantle so they can breath down Microsoft's neck.

A very valid point. I would imagine MS was going to leverage DX12 support to help sell copies of Windows 10, but once Mantle became available for current Windows versions it partly helped twist their arm into offering Win 10 upgrades for free? (bearing in mind it is absolutely not possible that they will put DX12 into previous Windows versions) I can only see Mantle as a Win for us gamers, helping pushing development of our gaming platforms. Competition is a good thing right & made great PR for AMD + maybe helped their sales in the process 🙂

#5023043

Denial

2015-03-03 15:41

A very valid point. I would imagine MS was going to leverage DX12 support to help sell copies of Windows 10, but once Mantle became available for current Windows versions it partly helped twist their arm into offering Win 10 upgrades for free? (bearing in mind it is absolutely not possible that they will put DX12 into previous Windows versions) I can only see Mantle as a Win for us gamers, helping pushing development of our gaming platforms. Competition is a good thing right & made great PR for AMD + maybe helped their sales in the process 🙂

There is no way that DX12/Mantle had any bearing on Microsoft offering W10 for free. I would guess that less then 10% of people that use Windows even know what DX is. Also Khronos just announced Vulcan which is essentially a derivative of Mantle. So their development was definitely not in vain + I'm pretty sure that DX12 is also heavily based on Mantle.

#5023045

sykozis

2015-03-03 15:43

NVidia was never going to support Mantle anyway, so it was a dead API long-term to begin with. Doesn't matter how many devs support it from the start, if NVidia doesn't support it then devs will drop support for it down the road anyway.

Mantle was created to make AMD's insanely hot running, power hungry v-cards look better in benchmarks, that's all.

Your theory doesn't work. Mantle allows more draw calls than DX11, but has only been compatible with AMD graphics cards. For it to make AMD's cards look better in benchmarks, you'd have to be able to compare scores with NVidia cards using Mantle, which isn't possible.

#5023048

Denial

2015-03-03 15:47

NVidia was never going to support Mantle anyway, so it was a dead API long-term to begin with. Doesn't matter how many devs support it from the start, if NVidia doesn't support it then devs will drop support for it down the road anyway.

I mean maybe directly, but if Mantle is the basis for DX12 and Vulcan (which is now confirmed) -- then it's being supported regardless.

#5023051

Reardan

2015-03-03 15:55

That only shows that AMD was left outside in DX12 development.

This is a VP of sales commenting on DX12. AMD is a 5 billion dollar company with 10000 employees, why would the VP of channel sales have knowledge about what the driver/API people are working on? He wouldn't. To answer your question about why would AMD create mantle? Because they created two consoles, one of which almost certainly uses mantle or something very very close to mantle as it's API. It's not a coincidence that mantle comes out at the same time as the consoles that AMD are powering. This is work they already had to do for the consoles. The consoles are x86 and use standard GPU and CPU designs, porting mantle isn't particularly tough when you've already done all the work. It is no possible to believe that AMD engineers and designers worked closely with Microsoft on the xbox, it's APIs, it's GPU, and didn't know about DX12. That is impossible.

#5023052

zer0_c0ol

2015-03-03 15:59

Question to u all.. what is amd Vulcan?

#5023053

Kaotik

2015-03-03 15:59

Mantle is either very similar to DirectX 12 or OpenGL Next. AMD obviously knew about both those APIs and that it'd be impossible to push an AMD specific API no matter the resources.

http://anandtech.com/show/9038/next-generation-opengl-becomes-vulkan-additional-details-released It's very similar to glNext aka Vulkan.

In fact Khronos has confirmed that AMD has contributed Mantle towards the development of Vulkan, and though we need to be clear that Vulkan is not Mantle, Mantle was used to bootstrap the process and speed its development, making Vulkan a derivation of sorts of Mantle (think Unix family tree). What has changed from Mantle is that Khronos has gone through a period of refinement, keeping what worked in Vulcan and throwing out portions of Mantle that didn’t work well – particularly HLSL and anything that would prevent the API from being cross-vendor – replacing it with the other necessary/better functionality.

Also there's indications that DX12 is very close to it, too, but no proof really edit:

That only shows that AMD was left outside in DX12 development.

AMD has been part of DX12 development since it started. AMD has also contributed all Mantle development work they've done to MS since day 1. Everything around DX12 indicates that it's development started only after Mantle development was already under way (except for 1 NVIDIA guy saying it had been going on for years, but knowing that IHV's are always part of the development, it's more than likely that it was just NVIDIA trying to claim "we thought this first")

#5023054

zer0_c0ol

2015-03-03 16:02

That only shows that AMD was left outside in DX12 development.

because of this kind of statements, no one takes u seriously

#5023056

Denial

2015-03-03 16:09

Question to u all.. what is amd Vulcan?

It's not AMD Vulcan, it's Khronos Vulcan -- they renamed OpenGL to Vulcan for glNext.

#5023057

sykozis

2015-03-03 16:11

XBox One uses AMD CPU and GPU, yet people think AMD was left out of DX development? XBox uses a modified version of DX. How would MS create this modified version of DX without AMD's direct involvement?

#5023061

zer0_c0ol

2015-03-03 16:16

It's not AMD Vulcan, it's Khronos Vulcan -- they renamed OpenGL to Vulcan for glNext.

nice

#5023063

Noisiv

2015-03-03 16:16

This is a VP of sales commenting on DX12. AMD is a 5 billion dollar company with 10000 employees, why would the VP of channel sales have knowledge about what the driver/API people are working on? He wouldn't.

That's a very low expectation bar. If it's village idiot that is volunteering information, I fully expect that he has some knowledge about it. Let alone AMD's Vice President of Global Channel Sales talking about technology that they have supposedly been helping MS with, and being 100% wrong about it.

#5023064

Denial

2015-03-03 16:16

XBox One uses AMD CPU and GPU, yet people think AMD was left out of DX development? XBox uses a modified version of DX. How would MS create this modified version of DX without AMD's direct involvement?

I don't even think it's a modified version of DX, I think it's a modified version of Mantle. Here's a quote from Anandtech:

What’s not being said, but what becomes increasingly hinted at as we read through AMD’s material, is not just that Mantle is a low level API, but rather Mantle is the low level API. As in it’s either a direct copy or a very close derivative of the Xbox One’s low level graphics API. All of the pieces are there;

I think when Microsoft started developing DX12, they based it on the API from the Xbox (because they want to unify both PC and Xbox) -- so they essentially based DX12 on Mantle. Which also makes sense given the fact that AMD has stated multiple times that developing for Mantle essentially helps bridge the gap between DX11 and DX12 since Mantle/12 are so similar.

#5023065

zer0_c0ol

2015-03-03 16:16

XBox One uses AMD CPU and GPU, yet people think AMD was left out of DX development? XBox uses a modified version of DX. How would MS create this modified version of DX without AMD's direct involvement?

here is the thing that bothers me the most.. some ppl will take that for granted and spread it on other forums as fact... really some users on this forum should not be here

#5023072

Reardan

2015-03-03 16:30

That's a very low expectation bar. If it's village idiot that is volunteering information, I fully expect that he has some knowledge about it. Let alone AMD's Vice President of Global Channel Sales talking about technology that they have supposedly been helping MS with, and being 100% wrong about it.

I think your's is high. You tell me which is more unlikely. 1. The VP of Channel Sales knows about work that is being done by an API and engineering team. 2. The API and/or engineering team working directly with MS to design literally the graphics API that xbox one will use doesn't know MS is working on DX12. Or they missed the statement from MS in Feb 2013 (before your quote from random AMD guy) which said:

I can confirm that the original communication sent to MVPs yesterday was inaccurate. Microsoft has issued a follow-up communication to the DirectX/XNA MVPs reaffirming that DirectX is very much an important and evolving technology for Microsoft" "Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for all of our platforms, including Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone. DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. We have absolutely no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX"

Does it say DX12 confirmed? Well, no. But it does say they are continuing to develop it. This quote you've found is the only guy saying there would be no DX, the only one. And he's not even someone who would be involved with it's development. So why would you take his word as gospel? He was clearly wrong, DX12 obviously exists.