AMD unveils revolutionary 'Mantle' API to optimize GPU performance

[Adhmuz]

Finally a step in the right direction for PC gaming, away from Microsoft and towards a dedicated API designed ground up to be all that it can be. This is truly a dream for developers, if nVidia cooperates that is. There really needs to be one universal API right now, it would reduce production cost and time greatly potentially saving the "dieing pc games market" However, this could just be over looked by the developers already in nVidia's pocket and cause for even bigger problems, probably resulting in a potential good API being overlooked and voila Glide 2.0. AMD is showing nVidia the door, they just need to stop trying to barricade it with heavy appliances and walk through it.

 

[dividebyzero]

I hope mantle becomes the standard and not just another API that must be supported.
Hoping its not just another glide or eax.

Unfortunately it sounds pretty much AMD (and GCN microarch) orientated:

PCGH asked Raja Koduri about Mantle and its "openess". He replied that AMD doesn't see Mantle as an open standard like OpenCL or OpenGL. He also tried to brush aside comparisons with Glide but then stated: If a competitor were to approach AMD to make their own backend and drivers for Mantle, AMD would not dismiss them right away.

Having said that, unless AMD are enforcing a proprietary standard, it shouldn't be difficult for Nvidia and Intel to rework the API to suit their architectures. Nvidia could always dust of their close-to-metal API (NVAPI) and pretty much do the same thing. I couldn't see a vendor/game dev lockout since AMD don't command the lions share of gaming hardware use - alienating a huge proportion of the gamer userbase doesn't seem like sound practice.