Pheww. That was a lot of marketing talk. I recommend ryans last piece of that as he have destilled the important.
Ps4 is running on variation of linux kernel.
I think its important to differentiate steam from this.
Steam is a gamers software and os platform. On linux its about trying to get rid of ms tax and the ms platform for games.
Mantle and ps4, xbox is about standardization of the hardware to the low level lowering cost for porting and quality of the ports.
Ofcource steam will be able to use mantle on linux but you can enjoy it on your pc now.
I can see nv is trying to blow their steam relation up for linux. Fine because they historically had good linux drivers as i recall. But mantle is perfect for steam on linux because of the work already done to support sony.
It's a matter of how the publishers and developers are seeing it. If the major engines incorporate a Mantle back end that includes a Linux path the ideal from THEIR point of view is a single easy port that still provides the most stellar gaming experience on a hardware cost/performance basis. Most or even
all of the coding optimizations and work they HAVE to put into the consoles can easily be ported to Steam OS.
They don't sell hardware, for the developers and publishers having to additionally provide high level ports to cover all PC hardware bases is just an additional and unnecessary expense on a new gaming/OS platform that
could be based on the same hardware the consoles contain.
Granted Valve has already committed to a very open ecosystem and it's highly unlikely Gabe will change that, but that doesn't mean the developers and publishers aren't pressuring him to go with a single architectural ecosystem that will add considerably to their bottom line and provide a far better gaming experience on far cheaper hardware that will drive sales of their games to a wider audience.
Keep in mind the Mantle advantage will be in force for the better part of a decade. Game engines that incorporate multiple Mantle platform paths will enable publishers and developers to provide very high quality ports for Windows and Linux for years at very little cost. Past that there's ARM/Android. AMD is coming out with a GCN based ARM chip for servers in 2013 and there are rumors of consumer chip. Whether or not that happens, it's a near certainty there will be a 64bit GCN ARM consumer chip in 2014 and AMD can just add an Android path to Mantle. Same goes for any future platform that catches on. Meego is still in play and Samsung is developing Tizen.
AMD has a highly capable Semi-custom division. In addition to making a line of their own GCN ARM based chips, they can make custom chips combining third party IP with AMD IP. Qualcomm for instance could make a GCN based ARM chip with their proprietary ARM implementation that could run 'hard core' games inexpensively ported to Android using Mantle.
For that matter just about anyone with the cash and desire could buy a GCN based chip from AMD and in short order have an inexpensive killer gaming system running an existing ecosystem of Mantle ported games.
One of the last slides in the DICE presentation at the AMD Hawaii event contained this line: "
Super excited about Mantle!"
http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/battlefield-4-frostbite-3-mantle
Emphasis not mine, it was on the slide. That is a significantly strong statement. That slide also contained this line: "Tons of ideas going forward "
Again, the smiley face was on the slide.
Another factor to consider is AMD's collaborations with CiiNow, G-Cluster Global and Otoy cloud gaming service providers. In 2014 AMD will be able to provide both state of the art low power GCN ARM based servers and GCN based x86 Sea Micro servers to their cloud gaming partners.
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/workstation/cloud/Pages/cloud-gaming.aspx#5
What stands out is there is a whole lot more to Mantle than what's been revealed so far and more generally AMD has a wide array of highly effective cross synergies in motion that provide significant advantages to a wide array of players in the gaming space and AMD appears to have every conceivable gaming angle covered.
What also stands out is Anand clearly got a presentation from AMD that convinced him AMD is the future of gaming and the recent site redesign is clearly, and very cleverly, done to continuously associate AnandTech with AMD in the minds of site visitors. The eye is almost irresistibly drawn to that red AMD CENTER box immediately after the initial look at the AnandTech logo.