Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

AMD Announces Mantle Graphics API

By - | Views: 25,270
So AMD has announced a low level graphics API that will be cross-platform. This will make things very interesting that's for sure. Their slides specifically said this:
QuoteWill be cross platform, very important to us

It didn't list any actual platforms planned though. Given their past support for Linux I can't see them missing us out though.

The first game to use this is a Windows, Xbox and Playstation FPS called Battlefield 4 and the API itself AMD claims is more powerful than any other API currently.

One image comes to mind:
image

I think Simon Roth developer of Maia said it rather well:

Mantle will only be worth using when it is on every platform, and supported by all vendors on all chips. ...So probably never.

Simon Roth (@SimoRoth) September 26, 2013


AMD is less than amazingly popular with Linux users due to their terribly buggy and under-performing drivers but it remains to be seen how this will work out for them. It could be the best thing since sliced bread or it could be moulding bread, who knows. I will keep a keen on eye it though.

We already have OpenGL which fills the role of a cross-platform API, but the problem is that each console runs a different graphics API so this would be a solution to that as well.

Mantle of course is an open API meaning Nvidia, Intel or anyone should be able to use it, it's the only way it would work they couldn't bring out a closed AMD only API as it would be dead on arrival.

The great thing about this is that by AMD powering the WiiU, Playstation 4 and Xbox One if it gets popular it will be a lot easier for developers to be cross platform including to Linux if AMD plans on supporting us with it as well, since developers don't have to change the graphics API they use. It's a great idea in my eyes and if it supports Linux then I hope it works out well and that NVIDIA and Intel jump on board with them.
It's never that simple though, sadly.

Source Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
14 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

Guest Sep 27, 2013
I really wish AMD had more to show about how open Mantle will really be. All I can find is how people on various sites interpret what they heard and saw during AMD's presentation. So far "cross-platform" for them means exactly Windows, XBONE, PS4 and WiiU.
Guest Sep 27, 2013
AMD still do very good CPU's and their chipsets tend to be decent -- they have also done more for the graphics stack quality on Linux than ATi ever did.
Sabun Sep 27, 2013
QuoteSo far "cross-platform" for them means exactly Windows, XBONE, PS4 and WiiU.

Exactly my fears. Whilst AMD was pushing for their Open Source drivers before Nvidia was, AMD's software support for Linux really feels on and off. Since they have their hands full with two consoles, it is very unlikely they'll focus on us unless Nvidia really starts reaping the benefits from being in a partnership with Valve over the SteamOS.

For that matter, what applications in Linux actually have a working OpenCL implementation? Blender has CUDA, but OpenCL is missing. I don't know of any video editors in Linux that make use of these GPU offloading capabilities. If Mantle comes into the picture, I feel it'll be just like these features. Nvidia may actually support it on Linux or bring out an alternative, and AMD probably won't.
Mike Frett Sep 27, 2013
So it's another 3DNow!....
Liam Dawe Sep 27, 2013
Quoting: Quote from mirv
Quoting: Quote from SilviuI really wish AMD had more to show about how open Mantle will really be. All I can find is how people on various sites interpret what they heard and saw during AMD's presentation. So far "cross-platform" for them means exactly Windows, XBONE, PS4 and WiiU.
You'll have to wait until November it seems. A little frustrating ("hey look at this cool thing! Now wait a couple of months until we say more....";), but that's marketing I guess. Maybe they're waiting for battlefield 4 to showcase it a little more.

As for the article, I'll say this every time somone blindly bashes amd's drivers: they have bugs, sure - the competition does too - but it's nowhere near as bad as people try to make out. My way of saying that such things in articles make the article look less than stellar, in my opinion.

Back to mantle: there's a fair amount that people can do with consoles that simply can't be done with directx/opengl, simply because of the architecture - and I suspect that most of that is to do with memory addressing. So my prediction is that mantle is aimed at HUMA systems primarily, and possibly some nicer texture management interfaces (PRT comes to mind). Nothing that can't be done with OpenGL....just have to get your hands a bit more dirty to make it work.
Blindly bashing? I was an AMD graphics card user for 5-6 years until I had enough of their issues.

Here's some food for thought too https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator-and-opengl-drivers-hall-fameshame/.

I do not blindly bash anything.
Lord Avallon Sep 27, 2013
Quote from liamdawe
I was an AMD graphics card user for 5-6 years until I had enough of their issues.

I totally agree with liam, I was a great fan of AMD but I got tired of their lack of support, I almost always had problems with games, I reported to them many times with no replies, I had the most crazy graphic bugs, then I changed back to NVIDIA (I had a FX5600 LE before), I can say that every graphics card has it´s bugs, but I can´t compare que quality of drivers, NVIDIA is miles ahead AMD from my experience, my life got much better.

About Mantle, I really hope they give a good support to Linux because this API seems very interesting and  could benefits us on the gaming scene in my opinion.
Hamish Sep 27, 2013
QuoteAMD is less than amazingly popular with Linux users due to their terribly buggy and under-performing drivers

And Nvidia is less than amazingly popular due to their closed nature and unwillingness to cooperate with the community, something both AMD and Intel have been far better at doing, and doing it cooperatively as a community.

I have had great success with AMD cards, and I absolutely love my Radeon HD 4670 which has been the best card I have owned since I replaced my also awesome Radeon 9200 which started me on Linux gaming. Now, almost all of this has been powered by free software drivers (even the old R200 card since it got its DRI drivers back during the Loki boom before AMD restored ATI's support for free Linux drivers) which have been improving by leaps and bounds, and I personally feel it a little disrespectful to all of the hard work being done there to make such a large swipe against AMD, although Liam is certainly within his rights to do so.

During the occasions I have used Catalyst I did have some issues, most of which are inherent to any driver setup that relies on closed binary blobs, and which I have also seen with Nvidia cards using their blob. Not to mention they have had their own vendor specific issues such as releases that burn out cards due to poor fan control and of course the whole situation regarding Optimus support. Having used all three vendors, I definitely still favour AMD, although Intel is working rather well in my brother's laptop.

And speaking of the problems of blobs, one can really lay the blame for that on Nvidia in the first place. Back during the aforementioned Loki boom all the various vendors started releasing graphics drivers for Linux, most of which were free in-kernel drivers such as those from ATI, Matrox, and 3DFX. Only Nvidia really insisted on using a blob, something which they were criticized for, but when the cards settled (pun intended) and only ATI and Nvidia remained, everyone was forced to adopt it, hindering the growth of a truly native Linux graphics system until the rise of Intel and AMD's acquisition of ATI in 2006.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4152?page=0,1

Not that this really has any bearing when discussing Mantle, which I do not really have an opinion on at this point.
Liam Dawe Sep 27, 2013
Quoting: Quote from mirv
Quoting: Quote from liamdaweBlindly bashing? I was an AMD graphics card user for 5-6 years until I had enough of their issues.

Here's some food for thought too https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator-and-opengl-drivers-hall-fameshame/.

I do not blindly bash anything.

Quite aware that as an editorial, opinion is part & parcel, just thought it could be a little less....."rant-y", for lack of a better word. Doesn't sound as professional, and takes the focus away from the actual topic (Mantle).
Not "rant-y" at all, it's just my opinion, i thought apart from my one comment due to personal experience it was overall a positive article.

Quoting: Quote from Hamish
Quoting: QuoteAMD is less than amazingly popular with Linux users due to their terribly buggy and under-performing drivers

And Nvidia is less than amazingly popular due to their closed nature and unwillingness to cooperate with the community, something both AMD and Intel have been far better at doing, and doing it cooperatively as a community.

I personally feel it a little disrespectful to all of the hard work being done there to make such a large swipe against AMD, although Liam is certainly within his rights to do so.
NVIDIA is still the most popular graphics card manufacturer around, no matter where I look especially in the Linux sphere everyone is recommending NVIDIA and still saying how AMD's drivers aren't up to scratch.

Disrespectful to who exactly? This is an editorial so it all comes from my personal experience and personal observations, It's not disrespectful to know how bad AMD's drivers can be from experience, my rig has an APU in it remember, I tried using it before I finally got an NVIDIA card, it was god damned awful.
Hamish Sep 27, 2013
Quoting: Quote from liamdaweDisrespectful to who exactly? This is an editorial so it all comes from my personal experience and personal observations, It's not disrespectful to know how bad AMD's drivers can be from experience, my rig has an APU in it remember, I tried using it before I finally got an NVIDIA card, it was god damned awful.

AMD is a large and varied company, so it can seem disrespectful to paint it all with one big brush - I would say that the likes of Marek Olšák, Tom Stellard, and John Bridgman are actually quite popular with the Linux community (in the case of Olšák one is even tempted to say amazingly popular).

And as I said, you are fully within your rights to say what you said, but AMD has been making huge contributions to the Linux community, and not just in the graphics space. And Nvidia is far from universally loved in the Linux community, as Linus Torvalds has theatrically shown on at least one occasion.
scaine Sep 27, 2013
View PC info
  • Contributing Editor
  • Mega Supporter
Quoting: Quote from Hamish
Quoting: Quote from liamdaweDisrespectful to who exactly? This is an editorial so it all comes from my personal experience and personal observations, It's not disrespectful to know how bad AMD's drivers can be from experience, my rig has an APU in it remember, I tried using it before I finally got an NVIDIA card, it was god damned awful.

AMD is a large and varied company, so it can seem disrespectful to paint it all with one big brush - I would say that the likes of Marek Olšák, Tom Stellard, and John Bridgman are actually quite popular with the Linux community (in the case of Olšák one is even tempted to say amazingly popular).

And as I said, you are fully within your rights to say what you said, but AMD has been making huge contributions to the Linux community, and not just in the graphics space. And Nvidia is far from universally loved in the Linux community, as Linus Torvalds has theatrically shown on at least one occasion.

Ah, Linus. Not sure you should ever rely on him to back up your well reasoned views. He did no one a favour when he flipped Nvidia a finger. Not him, not linux, and certainly not Ubuntu or Valve when they have to ask Nvidia to support technologies like Mir. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that negotiation.

Mantle? I think Liam summed it up nicely via XKCD. I'd love to proven wrong, but I can't see it.

As for Hamish pointing out AMD's "huge contributions", I'd have to see examples. All I had was an HD7950 PCI-Express card and even under Windows, the bugs and bluescreens were painful - maybe "two crashes a week" doesn't sound that bad, but when I replaced it with an Nvidia GTX670 about a year ago, I've yet to see a crash (although I very rarely use Windows any more).

And as for the HD6750M in this laptop. Goddam. I have to hold back an xorg version permanently or I lose my desktop. No one should have to jump through such ridiculous hoops (http://askubuntu.com/questions/205112/how-do-i-get-amd-intel-hybrid-graphics-drivers-to-work, just to make their laptop work under linux. Nobody.

AMD might be making huge strides, and I genuinely would like to know more about that, but for me, it's almost certainly too little too late. They've cost me money, they've lost my confidence and I won't likely buy anything from them again.

There you go, mirv. Now THAT was a rant. You're welcome!
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.