Mantle (API)

Mantle is an application developed by company AMD programming interface for graphics output. The interface is similar to Glide and to a much lower administrative costs than well-known interfaces such as Direct3D or OpenGL.

General

One of the first run-time environments for games, which is to support the Mantle interface fully, is the so-called Frostbite 3 engine, which is used with about Battlefield 4. In addition, the developer oxides and rebellion support for the Mantle API in their game engines Nitrous or Asura have announced.

The fact that Intel and Nvidia can support Mantle API with own driver is quite possible in the future, but AMD has because of the right architecture a distinct advantage. Also a future support the Linux operating system is likely. This is expected to happen in the form of extensions of OpenGL.

For AMD Developer Summit 2013 - and shortly APU13 - called meeting of the AMD developers, which took place from 11 to November 13, 2013, were given further details on the Mantle interface known, among other another Mantle was announced enabled game. Furthermore, it was heavily discussed in the reduced CPU load as well as highlighted the strong scaling of Mantle with more CPU cores.

The interface is well laid quite close to the Playstation 4, but in contrast, provides a higher level of abstraction hardware.

The interface is compatible with the high-level language High Level Shading Language ( HLSL ).

Name

The name, Mantle ' ( English for " coat" ) was chosen in accordance to the Earth's mantle. Thus, a layer model or a hardware abstraction layer is to be indicated, in which Mantle ( as an interface and driver) metaphorically the Earth's core (devices with support for Graphics Core Next ) surrounds and even the basis for the Earth's crust ( applications such as games ) forms.

Development

Approximately in 2008, Johan Andersson - then Technical Director in the company DICE and 2013, chief technical officer of the Frostbite Engine - approached the various graphics card manufacturers, with a request for a slim programming interface ( also English Low -level API called ). The company AMD has made the only graphics card manufacturer, at his request and has started to prepare everything. To mid-2012, then began the actual construction of the interface ( the Mantle codes).

Currently (as of November 14, 2013 ) runs the structure of the interface in cooperation with the runtime environment Frostbite 3

According to a publication for the trade press on February 1, 2014 appeared on the following day the first Catalyst driver package for Windows, which the Mantle interface software side in all GCN graphics cards - for now only available in Battlefield 4 (with Frostbite 3-based ) and the preview demos of the upcoming Star Citizen - includes.

Benefits

  • According to AMD are, by relieving the main processor, up to 9 times more draw calls or commands (English draw calls) per second than with a comparable interface; or - to put it with other values ​​- to the administrative expenses ( overhead) will be reduced to 8% - by comparison, the administrative burden of Direct3D is about 40 %.
  • Access to all the commands of the GCN graphics cards
  • Direct access to the image or graphics memory
  • Performance improvements over interfaces such as Direct3D and OpenGL
  • Platform independence
  • Better multi-core optimization possible
  • Multi - GPU rendering is no longer about traditional AFR but by a new technology, which is expected to be similar to the SFR

Disadvantages

  • Not support the old AMD graphics cards Radeon HD 6xxx - series and older
  • Not have the support of graphics chips from other manufacturers, such as Nvidia, Intel, S3.

Supporting Games

  • Battlefield 4
  • Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
  • Sniper Elite 3
  • Star Citizen
  • Thief, the PC port is the responsibility of Nixxes

Supporting Game Engines

  • Asura ( Rebellion )
  • Frostbite Engine 3 ( DICE )
  • Nitrous (oxides Games)
  • CryEngine ( Crytek )
  • Unreal Engine 3 ( Epic Games ) used in Thief

Benchmark results

In a first test on Golem.de the playback speed is increased in some multiplayer scenarios of BF4 on a test system with Intel i7- 3770K CPU and an AMD Radeon R9 290X by up to 78%.

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