AMD's Mantle Graphics API For Linux?

[johnc]

AMD is fully committed to OpenGL and OpenCL moving forward.

This is just hilarious. AMD has the worst OpenGL drivers (both Windows and Linux) and AMD cares so much about OpenCL that their much-touted TressFX tech was implemented with DirectCompute. Gotta make sure it's Windows only, after all.

And when it came time to announce all those wonderful new AMD tablets, how many were fitted with OpenGL ES and Android? About zero. And how many with DirectX and Windows 8? About a whole bunch. That's a curious decision -- is Android not a viable path in the tablet market? Something to think about. "Fully committed to OpenGL" indeed.


Look, I'm not saying here that I haven't seen their slides and fancy talking points. All I'm pointing out is that there's a difference between talk and action. And the action ain't there, and that's what matters.

[rudregues]

By the answers, great majority here at phoronix think AMD is acting in favour of DirectX/Microsoft. So I ask why John Carmack says Microsoft can be hostile to Mantle...? http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/ca...d-amds-mantle/

[johnc]

By the answers, great majority here at phoronix think AMD is acting in favour of DirectX/Microsoft. So I ask why John Carmack says Microsoft can be hostile to Mantle...? http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/ca...d-amds-mantle/

It's hard to extrapolate his ideas off a couple of short off-the-cuff tweets, but the way I understand what he's saying there is that MS and Sony would not want to see Mantle in a Steam Machine because a SM is, in some ways, a direct competitor in the living room. And a Steam Machine with both high-end hardware and Mantle would crush the PS4 and XB1. So they very well might use their influence to nip that idea in the bud.

And let's be honest here, in this relationship they have got a LOT of influence over AMD.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that AMD's financial troubles are to the point that they're selling their own buildings to raise cash and then turning around and renting them. AMD is in no position to be pissing off MS.

[mrugiero]

No tell me about the work involved, I'm genuinely curious. I wouldn't think going from one api to the same api on another platform would be that difficult, wouldn't it just me like going from XNA to iOS game using monogame?

I tried to imply the opposite, actually. Using the same API on different platform isn't that troublesome. Once you have a working graphic context, OpenGL is platform neutral, which means almost all of the code is still valid. The only platform specific code I can remember aside from context creation (which would probably be just a big function, with a matching context destruction one) is the buffer swapping code. Even easier, SDL can handle the differences between platforms for context creation and I believe for buffer swapping, too.
Supporting different APIs is almost like rewriting a big portion of the engine, except for the fact you could use the same design and interfaces, so that process can be skipped, but graphics is still a lot of the code, and you need to rewrite it all to support several APIs.
There is another part that need to be handled when working on support for different OSes, mostly in input and audio handling, but I believe those as big a big deal.
Consider then, writing some context creation and a few more things to support an extra platform (extra buyers), to write from scratch the renderer to get what? Better performance on 15% of the same amount of users buying your product than before you invest your time in such a port? I don't think anyone will avoid buying the game just because it's in OpenGL or DirectX instead of Mantle, so I don't see a developer writing things for several APIs if it doesn't enable new platforms, and writing only for Mantle would be probably crippling their own market. Of course, IFF consoles use Mantle (they need to use special, low level APIs, mostly because they make sense as they can squeeze all of the advantages having a fixed platform gives them), then using it BOTH enables support for the said consoles and for better performance on PCs supporting the API.

Please note, I'm basing my ideas on my work in a pretty much obsolete engine (a Wolfenstein engine I'm modifying as a hobby project, it supports Windows and almost everything that uses X11 and is neatly organized by its author so I can check how much shared code there is), so the proportion of code used in every area could be sizable different from what I believe it is.

[elanthis]

Funny, I was thinking roughly the same:
Wondering why he has not showed up so far.

Really, I'd be interested in what he thinks about it.

Short version: neither me nor our chief graphics dev even heard about it until this week. Could be cool, could end up another historical artefact, no idea.

[curaga]

By the answers, great majority here at phoronix think AMD is acting in favour of DirectX/Microsoft. So I ask why John Carmack says Microsoft can be hostile to Mantle...? http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/ca...d-amds-mantle/

MS hates Steam more than it hates Linux, that simple. Steam likely hits their wallet more.

[mike4]

Why Carmack assumes Mantle to be Linux compatible? AMD had bad linux drivers...so why should that change?

[smorovic]

By the answers, great majority here at phoronix think AMD is acting in favour of DirectX/Microsoft. So I ask why John Carmack says Microsoft can be hostile to Mantle...? http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/ca...d-amds-mantle/

MS will be hostile because Mantle allows GPU cross-optimization between PS4 and Xbox One. Also it might allow simple + performant ports to Linux (Catalyst) once support is added, of games that are written in Mantle. In the long term, maybe we will see some cross-vendor low level API emerge (along with necessary convergence in GPU architectures), and that might kill DirectX lock-in that MS now holds, simply because it will be faster than OGL and DX in games and thus favored.

For AMD there is a clear short term advantage. Almost all AAA games will be written in Mantle because of PS4 and XB One. Porting to AMD GCN on PCs will not be a huge effort and result with more FPS than in Direct3D or OpenGL ports (which will still be absolutely necessary).

Maybe AMD even comes up with some tools to convert Mantle code into e.g. D3D calls so that porting is easier (although with bad initial performance) and then devs can gradually refactor parts that are the bottleneck. This depends on what the new API really is, possibly it can't be simply translated into a high-level API (without running at emulator speeds).

[johnc]

GUYS IT'S OVER NO ONE WILL BE MAKING OPENGL GAMES! SORRY.

Looks like Activision is on board with Mantle.

https://twitter.com/wadetb/status/383266277818507264

Bye, bye OpenGL!

[mike4]

Bye, bye OpenGL!

It's rather bye bye DirectX!

If Mantle's gaining momentum, Valve will surely integrate it...hopefully.