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AMD advices developers to focus on DirectX 12 and glNext, not Mantle 1.0

AMD’s Mantle application programming interface was the first low-overhead/high-throughput graphics API to reach the market. The emergence of Mantle has made Microsoft and many other companies in the industry to redesign their APIs, including DirectX and OpenGL. While Mantle will continue to be AMD’s graphics innovation platform, the company now advices game developers to focus on DirectX 12 and Next-Generation OpenGL Initiative.

“The Mantle SDK also remains available to partners who register in this co-development and evaluation program,” said Raja Koduri, vice president of visual and perceptual computing at AMD, in a blog post. “However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle ‘1.0’ functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX 12 or GLnext.

Apparently, Advanced Micro Devices no longer wants game developers to use its proprietary API for their future titles, but wants them to utilize APIs from Khronos Group and Microsoft.

amd_mantle

While exact reasons why AMD advices game designers to use industry-standard APIs instead of Mantle are unclear, it is highly likely that the company wants to reduce its expenses on relations with independent software vendors (ISVs). Supporting multiple game developers costs a lot and if developers used next-gen OpenGL or DirectX 12, AMD’s support requirements would be considerably lower since usage of Mantle requires programmers to work closely with AMD.

Since AMD is not shutting its Mantle project down, it is likely that going forward it will focus on implementing support of exclusive features into Mantle, which will help leading game developers to make unique things with Radeon hardware. Still, AMD made it perfectly clear that Mantle will not be a widely-used API for every game designer.

AMD promised to share more details about the future of Mantle towards the end of the week.

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KitGuru Says: While it is obvious that Mantle support from now on will be relatively limited, it remains to be seen how limited it will be. AMD needs five or six AAA titles to support exclusive graphics capabilities of Radeon GPUs. Therefore, it should not be too hard for the company persuade a limited amount of partners to use Mantle. However, the question is whether game developers will actually want to utilize an API that is not widely used by the industry…

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18 comments

  1. So AMD finally do The Best Thing in History.

    Now we Have DX12/oGL Next and that’s a Next-gen Mantle and Full Hardware Radeon Utilisation on every API essential to Gamers. Like Nike 😉 Just Do It. And there will be no API fragmentation -> its better for Developers and finally for Us Gamers 😀 Great news

  2. Mantle did it’s job. It forced Microsoft to take out of the ice DX12. Mantle could be seen in a couple of games in the future, if people reject Windows 10 and stay with their Windows 7 machines. In every other case, AMD supports the open source by letting OpenGL and DirectX to take the driver’s seat.

  3. Fools. AMD can’t go head to head with M$ and nVIDIA and DirectX 12 with Mantle. Let the backpedaling commence…

  4. DX12 isn’t open. Nice try though. Oh, and good luck with FreeSync… you fanboys are gonna need it.

  5. lol, look who’s talking about fanboism, hilarious

  6. Fool, AMD started it, Microsoft will pay for it from now and on. Win Win scenario.

  7. Freesync? Oh you mean that one that Nvidia uses on the laptops without the need for a GSync module?

  8. The G71 has a supporting Tconn chip, not FreeSync tech. Do your homework before you look stupid… again.

  9. Because AMD has money to burn on something proprietary so they can partner with another company’s proprietary tech. Ok….

  10. It’s called truth. FreeSync will go the way of Mantle. Watch.

  11. Funny isn’t it, how DirectX works all these years?

  12. Yeap. It will be called…… wait for it…… Adaptive Sync. You didn’t expect that, did you?

  13. In fact I am betting on your stupidity for a hilarious reply, and yes, you didn’t disappoint me.

  14. Fanboyism is strong on this one.

  15. AMD announces LiquidVR see #LiquidVR on twitter, engadget has the story too

    at the bottom of the story it states

    “When asked about whether or not AMD is also working with HTC and Valve on the HTC Vive headset, AMD reps hilariously clammed up and asked whether or not they could talk about that yet.”

    Maybe Mantle 2.0 will be refocused on this

  16. Mantle is Dead ? where? Please turn on the Inteligence ! And read carefully my brothers 😉

    Mantle will be For AMD Games Evolved Program: CryEngine, FrostBite3 etc. (all the time)

    Mantle is now DX12
    Mantle is now Volcan
    Mantle is Still Open
    Mantle is in Win, Linux and Mac
    nV is in the Mantle Program also 😉 (DX12 + Volcan 😉

    Future Consoles PS5 and XboX will be AMD GPU+CPU

    All Next-Gen begins with GCN + Mantle -> Deal with it
    “Khronos Acknowledges Mantle’s Start of Vulkan”

    “Many companies have made great contributions to Vulkan, including
    AMD who contributed Mantle. Being able to start with the Mantle design
    definitely helped us get rolling quickly – but there has been a lot of
    design iteration, not the least making sure that Vulkan can run across
    many different GPU architectures. Vulkan is definitely a working group
    design now.”

    So in short, the Vulkan API was definitely started with Mantle and
    grew from there as more stakeholders added their opinion. Vulkan is
    obviously different than Mantle in significant ways now, such as its use
    of SPIR-V for its shading language (rather than HLSL) -> That’s Volcan

    DX12 was also started by AMD Mantle, AMD Working together with MS, Ideas Contribution in DX12 by AMD was 85% of the code

    THX, Greets to all o’ya

  17. Here: The Proof
    AMD + Open = win the Game for all of us Gamers

  18. Bro My informtion says something different-
    Original mantle is going back but definatly not dying. Amd already working on mantle 2.0 but that will be extremly closed source and use for R&D.
    Even ea games does not hv access to mantle next at this point
    Mantle next will be only for mamooth firms like animation studios to use exclusive features of professional version of r9 490x and later gpu which build on hbm 2.0