The AMD Mantle Thread

[bystander36]

Except now GCN equipped PCs can be 'uniform' with consoles as well because of Mantle. That's the whole point. Coding on next gen consoles can be ported almost directly to work on 7000 series and newer AMD video cards. Since it's low level API programming, it should be faster than a DX path.

According to the reports, from AMD, it does not say anything about porting directly, or almost directly. It does say they could reuse a lot of code.

And how can it be faster than using a DX path when a DX path is still a requirement?

 

[3DVagabond]

According to the reports, from AMD, it does not say anything about porting directly, or almost directly. It does say they could reuse a lot of code.

And how can it be faster than using a DX path when a DX path is still a requirement?

It's not faster. It's going to take tons and tons of work that AMD is paying more money that they don't have to implement. That's why they are doing it.

 

[bystander36]

It's not faster. It's going to take tons and tons of work that AMD is paying more money that they don't have to implement. That's why they are doing it.

That is what I meant. Perhaps he didn't mean faster to code for, but faster on the hardware.

 

[krumme]

According to the reports, from AMD, it does not say anything about porting directly, or almost directly. It does say they could reuse a lot of code.

And how can it be faster than using a DX path when a DX path is still a requirement?

Because they will only use a minor part similar to dx in the top of mantle api.

Remember the code for the game can be often compatible even if the coding for driver and api is different on the consoles.

 

[krumme]

I think Ryan have insight knowledge from amd. Perhaps "THE api" is closer to the reality than we think:

We know it took 80 man a few years to assemble the ip for jaguar apu. Only collect IP and get ready for production.

The teams sony and ms got from amd to their work on their apu is probably not larger. Presumable lesser in size and time to complete task.

Ms have special demands like cache. Sony have special demands usind gddr5 and perhaps more agressive hsa like implementation.
Just the task to add those specific requirement using new ip and a few minor difference on size of apu and make it ready for production, will take all ressources.

Where does that leave us? Its quite obvious, but the hardware in the consoles must be excactly the same. Now compare to a soc like qualcomm s800 (think extended southbridge with dsp and media capabilities but without lte and 3g)
http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/processors/800
And think about it. Not only cpu and gpu is the same. But connecting, networking, communication, display, sound and dsp must be excact the same.

Thats not to say the products is similar, because software can define the products qualities. This just goes to show its the same hardware all way but the differences we already know.

My guess is. The next iteration of jaguar will have lesser gpu and perhaps lesser cpu capabilities but otherwise 100% similar hardware with the consoles. Amd will reuse their ip blocks all over with their new semi custom strategy. So when we see a new tech from amd we can be sure it will appear under another name in other products under another brand. More agressive reuse than we think because we are not used to it.

So "The api" means excactly the same hardware. And even similar to the soc level beyond the apu part. Its unheard. Go think about the consequences.

 

[Asmith89]

In added words, wouldn't developers try to clasp out every ounce of ability that they can out of these systems.

 

[gorobei]

According to the reports, from AMD, it does not say anything about porting directly, or almost directly. It does say they could reuse a lot of code.

And how can it be faster than using a DX path when a DX path is still a requirement?

dx is a bundle of api: directInput, directSound, directSound3d, directDraw, direct3D, etc.

you can still use Dinput for all your game controls and Dsound3d for your audio, but route the render path through OGL or Mantle. Id (doom,rage)uses directx for controls but OGL for render.

with Mantle and Trueaudio you can bypass the bottleneck of D3D drawcalls and offload some of the cpu processing of audio. theoretically this would allow an amount of synergy as a little more cpu processing power is freed up such that games would be more gpu bound rather than cpu bound.

 

[flopper]

dx is a bundle of api: directInput, directSound, directSound3d, directDraw, direct3D, etc.

you can still use Dinput for all your game controls and Dsound3d for your audio, but route the render path through OGL or Mantle. Id (doom,rage)uses directx for controls but OGL for render.

with Mantle and Trueaudio you can bypass the bottleneck of D3D drawcalls and offload some of the cpu processing of audio. theoretically this would allow an amount of synergy as a little more cpu processing power is freed up such that games would be more gpu bound rather than cpu bound.

one benefit would be amd cpu 8 core become a viable option for gamers.
even the ipc playfield.

 

[krumme]

dx is a bundle of api: directInput, directSound, directSound3d, directDraw, direct3D, etc.

you can still use Dinput for all your game controls and Dsound3d for your audio, but route the render path through OGL or Mantle. Id (doom,rage)uses directx for controls but OGL for render.

with Mantle and Trueaudio you can bypass the bottleneck of D3D drawcalls and offload some of the cpu processing of audio. theoretically this would allow an amount of synergy as a little more cpu processing power is freed up such that games would be more gpu bound rather than cpu bound.

Intel is adding dsp to their future cores from broadwell on. Amd is doing the same. There is obviously dsp in the consoles. Its on the new gpus. Its more or less the same tech. Or at least it must be compatible for the most part. It just shows using dsp is a way to free up ressources especially on the lower end cpu. Its a way to get highend audio and media capabilities into very few mm2 and power usage. A dsp using process technology on this level is probably several thousand percent more efficient. We can eg expect to get highend 3d audio in phones within a year or two.

 

[krumme]

As a sidenote amd is probably buying a lot of the dsp ip. Why invent it yourself. Thats the old way of doing it.

I think we will see a lot of collecting of ip in the future for amd. Thei hydrabad team have done an excellent work. And even though the highly synth Jaguar core is limited in frequency it should be quite obvious now what the advantages is.

 

[krumme]

I think the most interesting part of mantle is:

Is the power for the consoles tilting towards sony or ms?

Imho that is an fight that could shape the future of pc.

If its severily going towards sony i think there will be an acceleration towards the arm integration and away from x86. Sony is riding their linux like implementation.
Add. Everyone is trying to avoid ms and x86 tax. If the arm cores in 4-6 years prove to be strong enough i think we will see the jump away from x86 for Sony. Why not android on ps5? Dx and x86 left for dead.

Bang !

 

[MeldarthX]

I think the most interesting part of mantle is:

Is the power for the consoles tilting towards sony or ms?

Imho that is an fight that could shape the future of pc.

If its severily going towards sony i think there will be an acceleration towards the arm integration and away from x86. Sony is riding their linux like implementation.
Add. Everyone is trying to avoid ms and x86 tax. If the arm cores in 4-6 years prove to be strong enough i think we will see the jump away from x86 for Sony. Why not android on ps5? Dx and x86 left for dead.

Bang !

Android would never be on the PS5 - several hints; is not that secure - Sony would have no control over it...very silly on that one Krumme - though some interesting ideas..

 

[krumme]

Android would never be on the PS5 - several hints; is not that secure - Sony would have no control over it...very silly on that one Krumme - though some interesting ideas..

Yeaa i know the last one is a bit of a stretch. Lol.

But look where Android was 4-6 years ago? Some progression i would say. It was born sep. 2008 with version 1.0. Especially compared to windows "progression". We are worlds apart today from ver. 1.0.

As a sidenote I think we will see plenty of hardware security "soldered" into future arm derivatives from eg amd and arm security into x86 cores. Perhaps its already in the consoles and the new gpu?
http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-strengthens-security-2012jun13.aspx
Here we go. The consoles is not only same dsp we probably have same security build in via cortex a5 hardware and trustzone.

 

[Creig]

That is what I meant. Perhaps he didn't mean faster to code for, but faster on the hardware.

Exactly. Low-level programming is more difficult and time consuming than high-level. But you get more performance out of low-level. So it's a tradeoff.

The problem up until now has been hardware fragmentation. From my understanding, consoles programmers use low-level coding much more extensively than PC programmers. This is due to the fact that console hardware is fixed. In other words, it's all the same for a single platform. XBox coding works on all versions of the XBox. PS3 coding works on all versions of the PS3.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the PC where there is a mix of AMD, Nvidia and Intel. Even within each company, you have various versions of hardware each supporting different feature sets. This also means that the coding for the XBox is different than the PS3 which is different than the PC. A developer would have to write three versions of his game to work on all three platforms.

But now with AMD hardware in the XBox One, the PS4 and in PCs, it's possible to reuse code between all three. This makes it more attractive for a developer to use low-level coding, even though it's more time consuming because he'll be able to apply it to all three.

For the PC market, they would write a DX path version for non GCN video cards. That still drops one entire platform worth of full development in order to bring their game to all three. In addition, the GCN equipped cards would be able to take advantage of the low-level programming for the console which would result in increased performance over the DX path version. It's even possible that GCN being used in both consoles and PCs will reduce development times for games since there will only be two major platforms instead of three.

Will it be a direct port between all three GCN equipped platforms? Of course not. But it sounds as if a good portion will be able to be brought across. And that is one of the benefits of Mantle that may encourage the various studios to implement it for PC games.

 

[krumme]

The purpose of mantle is foremost to increase the numbers of ports to pc. Secondly the quality of the ports. Thats the priority in amd own explanation and imho the priority that makes absolutely most sense from a business perspective.

 

[bystander36]

The purpose of mantle is foremost to increase the numbers of ports to pc. Secondly the quality of the ports. Thats the priority in amd own explanation and imho the priority that makes absolutely most sense from a business perspective.

We'll have to see how that works. In the past, when they used to have both DX and OpenGL code paths, often one was full of bugs, and sometimes both.

All we can do it wait to see how it turns out. I highly doubt it will work out as smooth as many think, based on past experience with similar situations.

 

[krumme]

We'll have to see how that works. In the past, when they used to have both DX and OpenGL code paths, often one was full of bugs, and sometimes both.

All we can do it wait to see how it turns out. I highly doubt it will work out as smooth as many think, based on past experience with similar situations.

Agree it have been a mess prior.

But this time the hardware is similar. Its a huge difference to prior situations. So they are not comparable the situations.

I have gone to great lenght in this thread to show how similar the hardware is even besides the cgn gpu and x86 cpu. We talk similarity on the soc level; dsp, sound, communication,... and perhaps even hardware security implemented via cortex a5.

This is absolutely a new level of standardization on the hardware side.

Its a damn new situation. And its quite the opposite of fragmentation.

Still we will see how this pan out, because similar and often compatible is not the same as same, and the devil is often in the details. But this is nothing like glide or open gl context.

The potential change mantle can induce goes far beyond the biggest change for gaming in 10 years.

 

[chimaxi83]

At least 15 games in development by Frostbite, all of them easily able to use Mantle. Now all that's left is to see if it's worth anything :thumbsup:

IGN article and source

 

[krumme]

At least 15 games in development by Frostbite, all of them easily able to use Mantle. Now all that's left is to see if it's worth anything :thumbsup:

IGN article and source

" The upcoming games we know will make use of the Frostbite engine aside from Battlefield 4 are Need for Speed Rivals, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mirror's Edge 2, Star Wars: Battlefront and the Next Mass Effect title"

Still 7 short here. What could they be?

 

[Erenhardt]

" The upcoming games we know will make use of the Frostbite engine aside from Battlefield 4 are Need for Speed Rivals, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mirror's Edge 2, Star Wars: Battlefront and the Next Mass Effect title"

Still 7 short here. What could they be?

New original IP?

 

[ShintaiDK]

New original IP?

Arh, we are talking about an EA company here. :biggrin:

 

[krumme]

New original IP?

That would be the best.

Mantle should release ressources to new games for EA

 

[96Firebird]

Arh, we are talking about an EA company here. :biggrin:

Yup, I was upset when DICE bought out Trauma Studios, and then even more upset when EA bought DICE. The Battlefield series was never the same for me...

Hopefully EA DICE can develop some awe-inspiring games, like BF1942 was when it first came out.

 

[krumme]

Thanx Erenhardt for bringing that question to this thread. Its the business essense of this imho.

EA needs to cut cost and have done so. It looks like mantle and frostbite could be their way to engage in more AAA titles acros platforms and doing so without the same risk of huge loss. Add faster ttm.They sure have more ambitions than their current revenue.

What about EA sports on frostbite 3?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

How would Mantle matter for that? It isn't used in either of the consoles and it has to add time, not reduce it for PC since DX is mandatory.