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GPUOpen has launched, AMD open up more to the community

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Sorry for the lateness, but GPUOpen from AMD is now officially open to the public. I really like the way AMD is going doing things like this.

QuoteGPUOpen marks the beginning of a new philosophy at AMD. It is the continuation of the initiative we started with Mantle where we embarked upon a journey to give game developers more efficient ways to drive the GPU. A couple of years later and the game development world is now rejoicing in the advent of standard and explicit graphics APIs such as Microsoft’s DirectX® 12 and Khronos’ Vulkan™. Now is time to do even more for developers.


As to what it is:
QuoteGPUOpen is based on three principles:

The first is to provide code and documentation allowing PC developers to exert more control on the GPU. Current and upcoming GCN architectures (such as Polaris) include many features not exposed today in PC graphics APIs, and GPUOpen aims to empower developers with ways to leverage some of those features. In addition to generating quality or performance advantages such access will also enable easier porting from current-generation consoles (XBox One™ and PlayStation 4) to the PC platform.

The second is a commitment to open source software. The game and graphics development community is an active hub of enthusiastic individuals who believe in the value of sharing knowledge. Full and flexible access to the source of tools, libraries and effects is a key pillar of the GPUOpen philosophy. Only through open source access are developers able to modify, optimize, fix, port and learn from software. The goal? Encouraging innovation and the development of amazing graphics techniques and optimizations in PC games.

The third is a collaborative engagement with the developer community. GPUOpen software is hosted on public source code repositories such as GitHub as a way to enable sharing and collaboration. Engineers from different functions will also regularly write blog posts about various GPU-related topics, game technologies or industry news.


See their full blog post announcing it here.

I'm not a games developer myself (<3 web programming), but I know how important it is to have open tools, open SDKs and more for developers. If more developers used stuff like this, then there wouldn't be such an issue in certain high profile games working better on one GPU brand over another. If it was an issue with the tool, it could be fixed for every other developer to use. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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10 comments

Pecisk Feb 8, 2016
It is no brainer in my opinion. To break Nvidia current monopoly on shader market AMD had to do something like this. I really hope AMD improve their game on their drivers too and their movement towards AMDGPU and Vulkan open source driver results in better performance and improved goodwill from gamers.
nifker Feb 8, 2016
I hope that AMD will somewhen replace the BLOBs in their kernel module.
Shmerl Feb 8, 2016
Many libraries in GPUopen are tied to DX11 now. Rewriting them to Vulkan will be a huge effort (which no one so far even announced), so it will be a long time until they'll become useful on Linux.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 February 2016 at 8:40 pm UTC
vulture Feb 9, 2016
name GPUOpen and this

QuoteCurrent and upcoming GCN architectures (such as Polaris) include many features not exposed today in PC graphics APIs

just doesn't make any sense.

while Gameworks suffers from being closed and that is why it only works good on NVidia, this one is tied to GCN and features not exposed in APIs. it is just another type of vendor lock-in

it is really sad if it is so. i kind of expected GPUOpen to bring something to the table
anth Feb 9, 2016
Quoting: vulturethis one is tied to GCN and features not exposed in APIs
That probably refers to things such as async compute, features of Vulkan/DX12/PS4/Xbox1 which aren't in OpenGL or DX11. That feature at least isn't GCN specific; Nvidia's claimed support hasn't worked so well in practise but their upcoming generation of GPUs may do better,
vulture Feb 9, 2016
QuoteThat probably refers to things such as async compute, features of Vulkan/DX12/PS4/Xbox1 which aren't in OpenGL or DX11

true about async, for the rest i beg to differ. all published things relate to DX11
loggfreak Feb 9, 2016
Quoting: vulturewhile Gameworks suffers from being closed and that is why it only works good on NVidia, this one is tied to GCN and features not exposed in APIs.
not true, most technologies in the GPUOpen were technologies they had before, and work on both AMD and nvidia, they just open-sourced them now. their new technologies should also work with nvidia.
also async compute is a Vulkan/DX12 feature, not AMD or nvidia specific, though nvidia's implementation of async is currently not as good as AMD's, but that's up to nvidia to fix in their newer hardware, since Async compute is one of the things that gives DX12 and Vulkan their biggest performance advantage over older API's


Last edited by loggfreak on 9 February 2016 at 4:36 pm UTC
chrisq Feb 9, 2016
I'm more impressed by someone being able to love web programming, than AMDs great open source stance.
As someone learning the react+redux+webpack+babel/es6 "stack", it so far seems immature and pretty horrible even when using the most praised tools.

This could be caused by ignorance, and I certainly hope that is the case.
So if you have any good arguments please tell me what I've missed, so far it has been the worst exerience of the 5+ languages I've learnt the basics of.
tuubi Feb 9, 2016
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Quoting: chrisqAs someone learning the react+redux+webpack+babel/es6 "stack", it so far seems immature and pretty horrible even when using the most praised tools.
Oh really? The trendy, new kid on the block isn't mature? A shocker indeed. ;)

Ignore the hype and keep your feet on the ground. If you actually want to get work done and not hate it, choose something modern enough, but tried and tested, with great and plentiful documentation. Preferably something you can develop in your favourite editor/ide. Personally I quite like Python (with bottle, beaker and friends) on the back-end and boring old jquery on the client side.


PS: Why do I have this weird compulsion to jump in and escalate as soon as a comment thread goes off topic? I think I need help...
chrisq Feb 10, 2016
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: chrisqAs someone learning the react+redux+webpack+babel/es6 "stack", it so far seems immature and pretty horrible even when using the most praised tools.
Oh really? The trendy, new kid on the block isn't mature? A shocker indeed. ;)

Ignore the hype and keep your feet on the ground. If you actually want to get work done and not hate it, choose something modern enough, but tried and tested, with great and plentiful documentation. Preferably something you can develop in your favourite editor/ide. Personally I quite like Python (with bottle, beaker and friends) on the back-end and boring old jquery on the client side.


PS: Why do I have this weird compulsion to jump in and escalate as soon as a comment thread goes off topic? I think I need help...

Thanks, that's not bad advice. I do use python and bottle or falcon on the backend.

As for the js-stuff being immature i don't think thats exclusive for react and friends (which has been out for close to 3 years). The whole ecosystem seems shaky, and I think the ever changing hot frameworks and other tools are indicative of that.

Sure, I could go with backbone, handlebars and jquery, but it seems like the js-world has moved on.
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