dividebyzero
Posts: 4,840 +1,271
I think that implication has been well and truly put to rest:From what I remember, Mantle is an open API so Nvidia and Intel can actually make use of it.
AMD understands Mantle not an open standard à la OpenCL or OpenGL....But if another hardware vendor [were to] create a backend for Mantle with special drivers for its own hardware, AMD will not refuse this application from the outset...
Seems to us like the wrangling over a possible PhysX and AMD drivers for it, which caused a heated debate a few months ago.
Raja Koduri interview with PCGH
The inference being that, should any other hardware vendor start using Mantle it is at the whim of AMD's code writing revision that it stays viable. The fact that Mantle does not support AMD's own VLIW4 (HD 6900 series and various APU's) and VLIW5 (everything else before GCN) GPU architectures pretty much implies that the code will be very specific.