AMD Mantle Developer Private Beta Begins
by Ryan Smith on May 1, 2014 8:00 AM EST
Word comes from AMD this morning that the private beta for the Mantle developer program has begun. Up until now the Mantle SDK (not to be confused with the drivers) has been in alpha development, with AMD granting access to only a handful of very close developers (EA/DICE, Nixxes, etc). The commencement of the private beta in turn marks the first time that the Mantle SDK has been made widely available to developers since it was announced at AMD’s 2013 Developer Summit back in November.
At this point AMD tells us that they have 40 developers pre-registered – AMD has been taking registrations for the past six months since the summit – and that they’re still taking additional developers. The beta, though much wider than the earlier alpha, is still a private beta, so developers still need to register with AMD for access. AMD tells us that “There are no objective criteria for being selected, as we are interested in talking to developers of all shapes and sizes. Past development experience is encouraged, however.”
Meanwhile AMD’s Mantle developer portal is up and running. Instructions for joining the developer beta can be found on the page, however all further access is password restricted.
Source: AMD
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djgandy - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
Just using OGL is not enough, because system capabilities vary so very much. You can't just port games between phone, tablet, PC, console. Different OSes different hardware. Everyone has a rendering abstraction these days, so they don't care what API they use.djgandy - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
DX12 has been in the works for ages alongside WDDM 2.0. A decent chunk of performance gains come from outside of the graphics API itself. There has been very little need for DX12 anyway. Mantle is hot air. Devs target lowest common denominator, which is 0% of commentators on this website.Mantle and DX12 are barely related. OGL is barely used.
ZeDestructor - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
What's of greater interest is OpenGL doing much of the same thing thanks to some clever changes in calling OpenGL (see the Nvidia/Intel slides from GDC 2014 if you want more info on that), and with OpenGL making a return (Steam on Linux, Android, iOS, OSX), it may be an even bigger disruption than DX12 for AMD's Mantle plans.grndzro7 - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
Except AMD is on board with OGL 4.4It would not affect AMD at all.
JackNSally - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
Why? Competition is making MS update DX. Mantle and OpenGL. Glad to see something creating changes, not sure if Mantle, DX or OpenGL actually started development first but good to see them!TheJian - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
OpenGL was first, it has been done for a few years. Mantle just caught up in Beta, DX12 xmas 2015 probably. OpenGL (NOT in beta) can be used today as my link shows in detail. You don't have to wait for it or beta test it. It's DONE. Usable today. GDC 2014 was an eye opener for many I guess, but they could have been making use of faster draw calls for years. As the guy points out, they just didn't know how. Now that they do what's the point? No need to wait for DX12 or use Mantle right?If OpenGL is done and can already do this for years, Mantle came 2nd right? And in beta as of today. DX12 was on the drawing board ages ago too. I don't think it had anything to do with Mantle's development pushing them, maybe just made them unveil it a bit sooner. Since they'll tie it to Win8/9 for sure anyway, my guess is it ends up like DX10, basically skipped as OpenGL starts to entrench for the next 2yrs with Valve/Google/Apple etc pushing it for ALL their OS systems.
grndzro7 - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
OGL couldn't do it. NV had to make new OGL extensions.djgandy - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
Yeah because if Microsoft didn't react with DX12 everyone would uninstall Windows and go with AMDOS?przemo_li - Monday, May 5, 2014 - link
OpenGL do not have many answers yet.1) Safe multithreading?
2) Access to Command Queues?
3) Access to individual engines on GPU?
4) Access to indivudual GPUs individual engines? (UberMultiGPU that require NO intervention from GPU vendor).
5) Pre generation of shaders, assets, textures, whatever. (However that is also implementation problem, and thus can be solved to some great extend without new specs).
6) Unified memory both for content and for CPU/GPU memory. (This is hard to solve as not all GPU vendors have solutions here).
AMD put a lot of work into APU's, hybrid computing and such stuff.
Not DX nor OGL match 100% here. Both need extension, and as one can guess, other vendors wont allow AMD to set standard, nor they will go for DX/OGL features they can not support.
przemo_li - Monday, May 5, 2014 - link
PSI'm for OpenGL.
But I think that Mantle can be placed on solid 3rd behind Mesa, Valve involvement, when counting beneficial influence on OpenGL.