AMD Reportedly Plans To Bring Mantle To Linux, Calls Mantle An Open-Source API

[TwistedDictator]

The latest official word from an AMD representative is that, yes, their Mantle API will come to Linux but they're not yet providing any time-line or firm support commitments.

There's been a bit of flip-flopping from various AMD sources and reports about whether their Mantle API will come to Linux in the near-term, which is AMD's high-performance graphics API designed to complement OpenGL and Direct3D for the gaming space by offering faster frame-rates. Mantle for now remains Windows-only and bound to just the Catalyst driver with the more recent "GCN" graphics cards.

Recently there's been mentions of AMD Mantle and Linux, but nothing too concrete. Richard Huddy, AMD's Gaming Scientist and a recent hire at the company, is now indicating that in fact Mantle will come to Linux.

 

 

Source

 

Comparing Mantle and OGL (and D3D11), Mantle's major advantage over OGL is that it provides a much friendlier programming paradigm for devs coding for DX. In order to take advantage of OGL's low-level optimizations, you'd have to do a lot of stuff that's just really different from the DX paradigm, which would significantly increase development time by a significant amount.

In contrast, Mantle provides a lot of familiarity with its paradigm. Apparently the shader code, which is something I presume takes a lot of effort to program, can be freely interchanged between DX and Mantle, and the low-level features of the upcoming D3D12 API bears an uncanny resemblance with Mantle's syntax. (firagabird)

 

^^ This pretty much somes everything up. Mantle could be the next thing, and the linux community is going to love it!

 

EDIT:

AMD drivers are more better on Linux then NVIDIA. So here is a video that I like to share

 

 

thanks tiger for getting the vid

 

 

[PhantomChevron]

Interesting, but there are not alot of gamers on linux, and I am not sure if Steam OS supports AMD cards yet, Have not been following it

[Thebman712]

i think it would be bigger fur steam os not liniux natively

[The Crazed Child]

AMD...seriously...before you try to do anything Linux-related, fix up your graphics drivers before you release the new API. From what I've heard, AMD's GPU drivers are terrible in Linux.

[Levent]

AMD...seriously...before you try to do anything Linux-related, fix up your graphics drivers before you release the new API. From what I've heard, AMD's GPU drivers are terrible in Linux.

i cant say nvidia drivers on linux is good either.

[AnnoyedShelf]

i cant say nvidia drivers on linux is good either.

They're not. In fact, they're so bad that Linus Torvalds basically said "Fuck You" to nVidia.

 

As for me, I love AMD and the Open-Source initiative, so I'm super excited!

[Scionyde]

They're not. In fact, they're so bad that Linus Torvalds basically said "Fuck You" to nVidia.

*snip*

As for me, I love AMD and the Open-Source initiative, so I'm super excited!

 

I personally don't know much about the issue, but I recall @LAwLz had a post about it not too long ago. So I'll just steal what his post said...

 

 

Are you kidding? AMD's drivers are much worse than Nvidia's on GNU/Linux. The reason why Torvalds gave Nvidia the middle finger was not because their drivers are poor, it's that they are control freaks over their drivers and and therefore hard to work with (the original question for Linus was regarding Nvidia's support for Optimus on GNU/Linux, which was terrible and they basically said "no we're not going to do it"). However, their closed source drivers are much much better than anything AMD has on GNU/Linux, and they have recently started helping Nouveau with some documentation (not nearly enough if you ask me though).

As you can see in these benchmarks (on phoronix), even the 550 Ti from Nvidia runs circles around the Radeon 6950 thanks to the much better closed source drivers. Performance is more sane and what you'd expect when comparing the open source ones though, but AMD's open source drivers contains lots of binary blobs unlike Nouveau which kind of defeats the purpose.

[Misanthrope]

Great, this really could simultaneously make future Direct X12 games be ported to Linux almost trivially while helping Mantle become a standard Nvidia won't be able to ignore....in theory.

In practice however, pretty much this AMD:

AMD...seriously...before you try to do anything Linux-related, fix up your graphics drivers before you release the new API. From what I've heard, AMD's GPU drivers are terrible in Linux.

[Linus_torvalds]

AMD...seriously...before you try to do anything Linux-related, fix up your graphics drivers before you release the new API. From what I've heard, AMD's GPU drivers are terrible in Linux.

They are very bad in windows and i am surprised how the hell are they working in linux at all.

[Tigerbomb8]

They're not. In fact, they're so bad that Linus Torvalds basically said "Fuck You" to nVidia.

 

As for me, I love AMD and the Open-Source initiative, so I'm super excited!

He didn't basicly say it.. He did say it

 

Also doesn't mantle use DX3D libraries..

[TwistedDictator]

 

Also doesn't mantle use DX3D libraries..

 

Cant belive you said that lol. NO.

[Linus_torvalds]

Also doesn't mantle use DX3D libraries..

yes! but anyway mantle is shit!

[Humbug]

Well this is the company that still cannot get openGL working properly on Linux after all these years... their excuse is lack of manpower. So why would they bother with Mantle on Linux? Will it be a half-assed job like their current linux drivers? Either way this should not be their priority on Linux.

 

i think it would be bigger fur steam os not liniux natively

What do you mean? SteamOS is just one Linux distro, if it works on SteamOS it will work on other distros like Ubuntu.

 

Also this may or may not matter... But Valve will not actively support Mantle unless Nvidia and Intel are on board too.

Of course Valve not actively encouraging it does not mean that they cannot release Mantle on Linux / SteamOS...

[TwistedDictator]

yes! but anyway mantle is shit!

Says the guy that cant use it lol

 

 

 

Well this is the company that still cannot get openGL working properly on Linux after all these years... their excuse is lack of manpower. So why would they bother with Mantle on Linux? Will it be a half-assed job like their current linux drivers? Either way this should not be their priority on Linux.

 

What do you mean? SteamOS is just one Linux distro, if it works on SteamOS it will work on other distros like Ubuntu.

 

Also this may or may not matter... But Valve will not actively support Mantle unless Nvidia and Intel are on board too.

Of course Valve not actively encouraging it does not mean that they cannot release Mantle on Linux / SteamOS...

 

Its not up to Valve, its up to the devs.

[Thebman712]

Well this is the company that still cannot get openGL working properly on Linux after all these years... their excuse is lack of manpower. So why would they bother with Mantle on Linux? Will it be a half-assed job like their current linux drivers? Either way this should not be their priority on Linux.

What do you mean? SteamOS is just one Linux distro, if it works on SteamOS it will work on other distros like Ubuntu.

Also this may or may not matter... But Valve will not actively support Mantle unless Nvidia and Intel are on board too.

Of course Valve not actively encouraging it does not mean that they cannot release Mantle on Linux / SteamOS...

yes i know but steam os will have far more gamers than linux

[TwistedDictator]

yes i know but steam os will have far more gamers than linux

 

SteamOS is linux

[Thebman712]

SteamOS is linux

yes but a variant of it, im saying it will be more important for steam os than regular linux because more gamers will use steam os for their htpc

[ZeroBreaker]

The fact of the matter is AMD is currently trying their best to squeeze the most out of their cards, what with the whole crossfire apu with gpu and mantle stuff.

Nvidia on the other hand has released the Titan Z.

Who do you think cares more about their customers?

Nvidia has the greater marketshare at the moment and so can afford to focus on specific markets such as windows and still do fantastically well, whereas AMD need the xbox and ps3 and laptop chips to sell well in order to get a decent presence and share of the overall market.

Even when you take the above into account, though, it is no excuse - I had a laptop with an nvidia gpu and later bought a laptop with an AMD apu.

my nvidia laptop refused to, in any way shape or form, work with the linux distro i had at the time (fedora). My AMD chip worked out of the box.

It's not an issue of open and closed source, i know from personal experience that nvidia, when they do issue closed source drivers for linux, don't give a crap about whether or not they can be used to the same extent as on windows - they are gimped from the start cos of drivers. My amd apu performs better with linux than with windows.

I would say judge a company based on your experience with them rather than anything else.

[Mooshi]

People drool over products like the Titan Z. Linux is still regarded as a niche OS that lacks support for /native/ industry standard software. Telling Nvidia to Fuck off isn't going to get a single thing resolved besides making fanboys cream themselves that Mr.Linus said a naughty word.

[Altecice]

AMD...seriously...before you try to do anything Linux-related, fix up your graphics drivers before you release the new API. From what I've heard, AMD's GPU drivers are terrible in Linux.

 

They are a shit load better than Nvidias Linux drivers.

[razor767]

I think this is good, I hope Mantle gets more games support.

[Humbug]

Its not up to Valve, its up to the devs.

i realize that. What i meant is that valve won't encourage it, as it's a vendor specific API. That's not the end of the world of course- they can still do it and launch it on Linux/steamOS. But valve's backing would help because they have a lot of influence over hundreds of other devs. Look at how many devs they have successfully convinced to port their games to Linux within just a few months. On top of that they are provide debugging tools, share R&D to help other devs and they have developer conferences. Not to mention working relationships with hundreds of studios who publish their Linux games on steam. So Ya it's not essential but in the current Linux ecosystem valve's support helps.

[LAwLz]

Potentially great news, but I am skeptical.

Only time will tell if they actually follow through with their plans, and how it will turns out. Making Mantle Open Source (and more importantly, free as in freedom) would be fantastic.

GNU/Linux would also benefit from this greatly which would be great. Microsoft really needs more competition so that they stop stroking their egos and actually listen to criticism.

 

 

Edit: Just noticed that it says "Open Source API". Do they mean that it is "open source" as "here is documentation for the APIs, you can call them whenever you want" or "here is all that, and the source code for all the functions"? I am afraid that it is the former and in that case they are just spewing bullshit about it being open source. The former would be like saying Direct3D is an "open API". It sounds like this won't come anytime soon either.

I'll keep my expectations as low as possible. That way I won't be disappointed no matter what they do.

[Opcode]

Also doesn't mantle use DX3D libraries..

 

yes! but anyway mantle is shit!

No, Mantle is it's own API.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Anything to help the push towards Linux being a legitimate gaming platform. Free OSes are better than ones that cost money.

 

Now if only there was compatibility with software for developers and creative pros.