Mantle not restricted to GCN

[LAwLz]

It is called low level because if gives you access nearly driver level to the hardware. There are still some abstraction layers. 

It is low level like c vs java, and not like assembler vs c 

Bad analogy because I don't think anyone other than Java developers would describe C as "low level". You can do "near driver level" programming when using DirectX as well, so if that's all Mantle turns out to be then I am really disappointed.

 

I don't think we should talk about unconfirmed things as if they are facts. We don't know what Mantle is, and with these new "it's not restricted to GCN!" news it is even more unclear what it is.

[LAwLz]

You forgot Intel and its HD graphics. There's two graphics vendors.

And ARM, Matrox, Imagination Technologies and Qualcomm.

[Apocalypse]

Bad analogy because I don't think anyone other than Java developers would describe C as "low level". You can do "near driver level" programming when using DirectX as well, so if that's all Mantle turns out to be then I am really disappointed.

 

I don't think we should talk about unconfirmed things as if they are facts. We don't know what Mantle is, and with these new "it's not restricted to GCN!" news it is even more unclear what it is.

 

 

German c't has a interview at APU13 with DICE's rendering architect Johan Andersson regarding Mantle: http://heise.de/-2045398

 

Noteworthy statements:

- Effort to have console-like access and programmability on PC started about 5 years ago. Spoke to different companies including Nvidia and Intel.

- Respect for AMD being the sole company to realize his suggestions.

- Yearly meetings, long discussions. Mantle code was started one and a half year ago.

- Project was internally treated as top secret, similar to Eyefinity.

- Mantle is *not* a console-like AMD interface for GCN graphic chips. It allows finer grained access to the GPU. Too specific cases can be realized through extensions. Possible for other manufacturers to support Mantle.

- DirectX 11 compatible doesn't automatically mean potentially Mantle compatible. GPU architecture needs to fulfil specific requirements. Nvidia's Kepler should be able to do that.

- Wants to see Mantle everywhere (re smartphones, tablets, mobile, Linux and Mac OS).

- Still too early on how much faster Mantle will be over Direct3D.

- Porting console games using Direct3D may still be faster, Mantle may take longer but helps doing it well re performace, level of details and robustness.

 

And btw direct x on the xbone offers similar low-level functionality to mantle. The APU13 keynotes are very clear that mantle gives developers the tools to operate on similar level of optimization than the catalyst team is when they optimize their drivers for new games. 

[LAwLz]

And btw direct x on the xbone offers similar low-level functionality to mantle. The APU13 keynotes are very clear that mantle gives developers the tools to operate on similar level of optimization than the catalyst team is when they optimize their drivers for new games. 

The thing is, if there is abstraction (which there has to be quite a lot of if it can run on non-GCN cards) then it's not low level. If it is low level then it can't run on cards other than GCN. If it's not low level then chances are it won't be nearly as good as people think it will be. Again, don't think we should assume so many things since we barely have any info at all about Mantle. Even in your quote, only a handful of points are even relevant. When they started talking about it is not relevant to how good it will actually be, AMD being the only one to snap up his offer has nothing to do with how good it will be, the project being top secret is irrelevant to how good it will be... You get the point.

[Ryan Leech]

Hopefully AMD shares it with us too

[Vitalius]

The thing is, if there is abstraction (which there has to be quite a lot of if it can run on non-GCN cards) then it's not low level. If it is low level then it can't run on cards other than GCN. If it's not low level then chances are it won't be nearly as good as people think it will be. Again, don't think we should assume so many things since we barely have any info at all about Mantle. Even in your quote, only a handful of points are even relevant. When they started talking about it is not relevant to how good it will actually be, AMD being the only one to snap up his offer has nothing to do with how good it will be, the project being top secret is irrelevant to how good it will be... You get the point.

That is assuming it isn't built to be both. 

The way they talk about Mantle, it is designed to be modular. It looks at what it has to work with, then acts accordingly. If it is GCN, it uses the tools associated with that, if it is DirectX, it uses the tools associated with that. Etc. 

In other words, it is low level when it can be (GCN and Mantle based games), but it works with other APIs or architectures fine, but at a performance loss due to having an added layer of translation.

Read this and you will understand what I mean. And I believe that post tells us a lot about Mantle. 

[ACatWithThumbs]

The thing is, if there is abstraction (which there has to be quite a lot of if it can run on non-GCN cards) then it's not low level. If it is low level then it can't run on cards other than GCN. If it's not low level then chances are it won't be nearly as good as people think it will be. Again, don't think we should assume so many things since we barely have any info at all about Mantle. Even in your quote, only a handful of points are even relevant. When they started talking about it is not relevant to how good it will actually be, AMD being the only one to snap up his offer has nothing to do with how good it will be, the project being top secret is irrelevant to how good it will be... You get the point.

Mantle gives you only raw tools nothing more.

The dev has to optimize everything by himself for each GPU/CPU.

It's not like a normal API it's just a thin layer of tools and the dev has then to build up from that.

Everything that comes out of Mantle is the work from the dev not from Mantle.

If they will support more GPUs the dev will then have to consider to make it less polish or to put in more work to get the same level out of everything.

 

[Apocalypse]

The thing is, if there is abstraction (which there has to be quite a lot of if it can run on non-GCN cards) then it's not low level. If it is low level then it can't run on cards other than GCN. If it's not low level then chances are it won't be nearly as good as people think it will be. Again, don't think we should assume so many things since we barely have any info at all about Mantle. Even in your quote, only a handful of points are even relevant. When they started talking about it is not relevant to how good it will actually be, AMD being the only one to snap up his offer has nothing to do with how good it will be, the project being top secret is irrelevant to how good it will be... You get the point.

 

Sorry but that claim is ridiculous. Even good old assembler offers you some levels of abstraction. The level of abstraction in Mantle is simply lower than in DX11, thats it. That is what they stated, that is what the keynotes showed. Direct access to (virtual) memory, direct feedback on your texture sizes instead of guesswork, ability to do async and asymmetric load on multiple cores, not even bound to single cpus, etc some parts of Mantle should have even a quite high level of abstraction, simply for convenience and compatibility. Mantle is all about offering engine developers control. 

 

 

Quite a lot abstraction? Yeah, right, and still all this stuff is simply not possible an PC dx11, which is by the way shocking. The whole purpose of an API is to offer abstraction, what did you expect?