Somewhere at AMD there’s a list with 40 game developers on it. We don’t know any of their names, but they’re all dead keen on the idea of bypassing DirectX using an API that whispers directly to your graphics card, for muchos performance gain.
AMD are running a private beta program beginning tomorrow for their Mantle SDK. You’re not invited, but developers of all budgets and sizes are.
40 studios have pre-registered for the beta, and AMD are now publically inviting developers to apply via their site portal for a spot in the next wave.
“Mantle has achieved all necessary stability, performance and functionality milestones required to ready it for a broader audience in the developer community,” write AMD.
“To support this, AMD has launched a new portal that will allow new game developers to experience the benefits of low-overhead graphics APIs for themselves.”
The GPU manufacturers stress that there are no “objective” criteria for selection. They’re looking to work will developers of “all shapes and sizes”, though they’re hoping for a modicum of experience to boot.
“Together, AMD and this large community of experienced game developers will help to shape the future of Mantle,” say the company, “and pioneer best practices for working with the low-overhead graphics APIs broadly in our industry.”
Hmm! The graphics landscape’s changed since we last dissected the Mantle API: Microsoft have announced new performance-pushing DirectX tools – and NVIDIA, AMD and Intel all shared a stage at GDC to talk “radically” reduced driver overhead in Direct3D competitor OpenGL. Whatever your GPU, games are set to run faster in the near future.
Mantle’s gains are tied specifically to AMD cards, of course – do you think you’ll be in a position to take advantage of them?