AMD announces Mantle SDK beta for developers

[Scorpus]

AMD has today announced the next major phase for their low-level Mantle graphics API: a private, beta SDK for developers, which they can use to integrate Mantle into their game engines.

While this news doesn't directly involve consumers or popular PC games, having a Mantle SDK available to developers is a significant step. Companies no longer have to partner directly with AMD to get in on the Mantle action, which will help Mantle spread into more and more games (especially indie titles) and a larger number of game engines.

AMD has already seen "unprecedented demand" for the Mantle SDK, with 40 different development studios registering for the program prior to its formal announcement today. More developers can jump aboard by visiting the new Mantle SDK portal, which requires you to register your interest with AMD before they select and share access to the information.

The choice to release an SDK comes after the team working on Mantle decided that the API has "rapidly achieved all necessary stability, performance and functionality milestones required". This isn't the end of work on Mantle, but it's now ready for a broader audience of developers.

You'll already find Mantle support in several game engines, including DICE's Frostbite (Battlefield 4), Crytek's CryEngine (Star Citizen), and Oxide Game's Nitrous; plus several games including Thief, and the upcoming Sniper Elite III and Civilization: Beyond Earth. AMD has hinted that to us that not every Mantle-supporting engine has been revealed thus far, so stay tuned for more announcements in the near future.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/56599-amd-announces-mantle-sdk-beta-for-developers.html

 

[hahahanoobs]

" Companies no longer have to partner directly with AMD to get in on the Mantle action..."

If only they could have pulled this off from the start. It was obvious AMD didn't have the time or the money to keep going back and forth between devs.

 

[VitalyT]

When the first round of articles came out about Mantle, it looked like a complete disaster. When the second wave of articles came out with updated games, it looked like a total waste of developers' time.

What changed since then to cause that much interest all of a sudden? The gaming market must be in a complete depression to have interest in a platform that offers such evidently low improvements as we saw.

 

[Forg0t2]

" Companies no longer have to partner directly with AMD to get in on the Mantle action..."

If only they could have pulled this off from the start. It was obvious AMD didn't have the time or the money to keep going back and forth between devs.

Don't you understand? This is good sales talk

 

[hahahanoobs]

When the first round of articles came out about Mantle, it looked like a complete disaster. When the second wave of articles came out with updated games, it looked like a total waste of developers' time.

I thought the same as soon as I saw slides from AMD saying Mantle was targeted for low end CPU's and high end GPU's, and then DICE saying you could get the same results with both a high end GPU and CPU. That kind of confusion was an immediate red flag.

What changed since then to cause that much interest all of a sudden? The gaming market must be in a complete depression to have interest in a platform that offers such evidently low improvements as we saw.

Fanboys, marketing and possibly the placebo effect. Tests I've read online show very little gains with anything higher than an APU, but you'll still find people saying in their experience, they are getting ~20-30fps boosts with varying setups including overclocked K processors. So I don't know what's going on.

In my experience with 14.2 and 14.3, I had stuttering and loss of frames. IMO for the sake of Mantle, this SDK must greatly improve things, or this will be remembered in my mind anyway, as just another smokescreen (one other being FreeSync) to bring some positive to a still hurting AMD.

 

[GhostRyder]

When the first round of articles came out about Mantle, it looked like a complete disaster. When the second wave of articles came out with updated games, it looked like a total waste of developers' time.

What changed since then to cause that much interest all of a sudden? The gaming market must be in a complete depression to have interest in a platform that offers such evidently low improvements as we saw.

Mantle has shown improvements on many platforms up to 50% in some cases on the Thief game. It has not gotten irrelevant, its gotten more relevant to give PC people more control of the GPU and make games more accessible to the mobile and PC crowd (Laptops and desktops).

Fanboys, marketing and possibly the placebo effect. Tests I've read online show very little gains with anything higher than an APU, but you'll still find people saying in their experience, they are getting ~20-30fps boosts with varying setups including overclocked K processors. So I don't know what's going on.

It works...There is plenty of proof it does what its supposed to which offers improvements and stability across all platforms.

The point of Mantle is to make PC's have a better low level control of the GPU and make choosing a CPU alot easier. It also makes games run better on the hardware provided which is better for everyone. Giving the SDK will help devlopers and indie-game people develop better games across the board. This is a good thing and I can tell you its going to end up helping the platform all together. Ill be taking a look at this kit and seeing what can be done as well.

 

[Revolution 11]

Mantle has already proved useful as a force of change as Nvidia is now talking about improving their OpenGL drivers to be closer to bare metal and Microsoft was pressured into doing the same with DirectX 12.

Whether Mantle itself will have any value is up to AMD. I think that adoption has been hampered because AMD did not have the resources to do the SDK and Mantle launch on a more timely basis.

 

[dividebyzero]

Mantle has already proved useful as a force of change as Nvidia is now talking about improving their OpenGL drivers to be closer to bare metal

You have it the wrong way around. Nvidia's OGL extensions came about at the same time that their Kepler architecture which support them. They were presented at SIGGRAPH in 2012.
FWIW, AMD's own OGL extensions also predate Mantle. In fact the OpenGL 4.4 specification arrived a full two months before Mantle's first slide deck.

 

[Guest]

"Giving the SDK will help... ...indie-game people develop better games across the board."

As an Indie, I strongly disagree. AMD has given me no indication that Mantle will help me develop better (or any) games across the board.

From my stand-point there is no api. There is no software. There is no documentation, period. You can say, "Just wait, it'll be here soon. Just wait till it's out of beta." I have been waiting, and still nothing.

What AMD has shown, is an enormous amount of favoratism to the AAA title companies. From the beginning they were working with Dice and then Eidos during the "private" alpha. And now the're working with more AAA companies on the "private" beta.

Just wait, just wait... till next year? When these AAA's have had almost 1-2 years to learn and implement Mantle? There is no indication that I'll have access to the api any time soon, if ever.

AMD has called it an open, cross-platform api, when in fact it is a closed (Nvidia and others have no say in the API) hardware dependent (GCN architecture) API.

It was a private alpha and private beta. And I wouldn't be surprised if it became a private API.