DirectX & OpenGL to open up low-level access

It look like the Mantle apprroach have pay off..

( When AMD is represent 99% of DirectX developpement, thats not finally a so big surprise )

 

It really depends on the platform you're using. A high-end AMD GPU is likely going to give significantly worse results than you get in Windows. Nvidia in many cases performs better in Linux than it does in Windows.

 

It's not about getting more FPS, it's about developers being able to do more demanding stuff while FPS stay the same, therefore people with high end cpus profit in the long run too.

 

This, I never really expected Mantle itself to take off, but to have an impact like this and have people lift off their asses and make OpenGL/DirectX more efficient, that's a great thing.

 

Regardless of your hardware....performance gains are performance gains. Plus, it makes more advanced visual possible.

 

So all we now need to do is wait for Windows 15 and R12 450 / GF 1100 to run it and we'll all be good to go ROFL

 

Proposed what? We aren't given specifics, it's a high level concept something that will exist in D3D OGL which are not low level api's that mantel is and thus would work for many arch assuming some level of similar base as it's not real direct calls like mantel is. It's likely something that's been researched and done at concept levels but wasn't implemented because it would cause a another large revision change to DirectX, hell developers barely started to use DX11 let alone something that might put it to DX12, assuming any additional hardware requirements may be needed. Anyways What did developers do with the like 20 times less overhead in DX11 from DX9, they ate it all up with poor use of tessliation etc.

 

Exclusive feature of DX12




Only available in Win 9

 

And it'll require new hardware....as usual.

 

Good news, but mostly for OpenGL, **** M$

 

The Question is :


Why did they wait for this many years?

 

For hardware specific features, yes. But there's a possibility that the next DirectX and OpenGL will backwards compatible with today's GPUs, and will let them benefit by the software improvements.
DX10/10.1 GPUs got some benefits by DX11, and DX11.0 cards got support for some DX11.1 and 11.2 features

The biggest obstacle for a new DirectX is that it most likely is Windows 9 only

 

It's begun. The CyberPaddies will spread throughout the universe.

I can see the OpenGL changes working on anything that already supports OpenGL 4.4, Directx I don't know.

But is this also something more on the CPU side of things?

 

This great for pc world, but MS will probably do what they always do and tell us it can only be done in "said" os.

Opengl on the other hand with low level control would be available to all that support the correct hardware version. this i cant wait. In fact I would like to see opengl make comeback

 

How so? Mantle has been announced last Fall, and as soon as next Spring Microsoft and all three major GPU vendors are ready to implement a similar feature in Direct3D. I'd rather assume that if they were really approached by AMD, they all agreed to the proposal right from the start and spent these six months refining the specs. Or that it was actually started by Microsoft in the first place.

AMD bothered to introduce their own API because they basically have the same GCN architecture coming on XBox One, PS4 and the PC, so the developers will have to target GCN anyway. But such low-level API would help AMD sell lower-end GPUs, their bread and butter, where the performance gains would be most noticeable.

[thread=386971]Read another thread[/thread], there is no need for OpenGL 5 - the announcement says that you can reduce driver/API overhead right now, presumably by only using data formats and APIs (OpelGL extensions) which are close to the metal and do not require translation work on the CPU.


The same goes for Direct3D - it doesn't have to be a new incompatible "D3D12" API, like D3D10.x-D3D11.x was to D3D8/D3D9.

It should be a superset of D3D11.2, just like it was with D3D11.1 and 11.0. I just don't see Microsoft doing another clean break and introduce a totally new incompatible API right now, when they have just launched Xbox One, Windows Phone 8 and Surface, all of which are based on Direct3D 11.x and run on D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 hardware using the concept of Feature Levels.


This will probably be something like "D3D11.3" with a new "pure hardware" device type in addition to "hardware" (which is actually a "hardware abstraction level" (HAL) and can involve automatic software translation), "WARP" and "reference" devices. This "pure hardware" device will probably only allow a limited subset of the D3D11 API, DDI and data formats, and will provide some form of caps (capability bits) query and/or new feature levels.


It will certainly require a new version of WDDM/DXGI, so it will be Windows 9 only. But it shouldn't require new hardware - it should work on relatively recent GPUs like GCN1/1.1 and Fermi/Kepler.

You are perfectly right. Direct3D is based around Hardware Abstraction Level (HAL). This means that the device driver - which talks to the OS and the Direct3D runtime through D3D Device Driver Interface (DDI) and DirectX Graphics Interface (DXGI) - has to abstract its underlying hardware implementation and accept generic data types (texture and vertex formats, shader bytecode etc.) which are defined by DDI/DXGI, and perform on-the-fly translation on the CPU as needed.

However, if Direct3D could be changed to bypass the abstraction level and only allow data types and API calls which are closer to the actual hardware, that would remove most overhead.

Since most computation-intensive work is already done with HLSL shaders in Direct3D11, which require very certain feature set in hardware, I'd imagine this could be done with minimal changes to the Direct3D API itself.
And even if it couldn't, I believe Mantle does support HLSL shaders just like D3D does, so this "pure hardware" Direct3D (D3D12?) could be treated just like another renderer in addition to Mantle and Direct3D11 HAL.

 

What a great and in depth answer. Thanks for that insight of how things might be if this pans out.

 

Looks like AMD will be forced into fully supporting DX11 and finally implementing multithreaded rendering/deferred contexts/driver command lists.
AMD is DX11.2 on paper, but in reality it's NV that gains most by moving to Win 8.1

Also, hopefully AMD catches up with OpenGL.
This is latest AMD Catalyst 14.2 Beta1.3 on my R9 290:



Though we have to give it AMD - this is all them imho.
If it wasn't for Mantle, Intel and Nvidia would be sitting happily on DX11 for god-knows how long.

 

^^ Microsoft... duh. Not Intel.

 

I don't think Direct3D improvements were really driven by Mantle API - they are rather a side-product of Xbox One development.

Quote from an October 2013 blog post by Kam VedBrat, a former Direct3D/Direct2D/DirectWrite developer and currently a Group Program Manager for Games and Graphics Platform:http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/10/14/raising-the-bar-with-direct3d.aspx: