GamingBolt spoke to Neil Trevett, who is Vice President for Nvidia’s Mobile Ecosystem and President of the Khronos Group, about Vulkan. Trevett discussed the project’s growth over the past several years, engines like Source 2 taking advantage, it’s role in a cloud-based future, and much more.

"It has been an interesting design challenge to keep the level of abstraction low, but still provide portability across multiple architectures – but with the diverse perspective and expertise of the Vulkan working group we think we have succeeded."

Rashid K. Sayed: Mantle has apparently formed the foundation for Vulkan which has now grown to be something bigger. How did this transformation come about?

Neil Trevett: Mantle started the industry discussion around the need for more explicit 3D and compute APIs and strongly influenced the trio of new generation GPU APIs arriving in the industry: DX12, Metal and Vulkan. AMD also directly contributed Mantle to the Vulkan design process. All three share similar design goals to reduce driver complexity and overhead. Metal has chosen to provide less flexibility in some areas, for example memory management, in order to make programming simpler for mobile developers.

Vulkan is focused on providing maximum flexibility and performance to support advanced applications, middleware and engines. Overall however, they are similar enough that business concerns, such as availability on platform, portability and cross-platform support, will probably outweigh low-level technical considerations of API selection for most developers. Metal was originally designed to solely support AMD hardware but the Vulkan working group has substantially extended and adapted the original Mantle design to create an API that supports a wide diversity of GPU and OS architectures.

Of the three new generation APIs, only Vulkan is non-proprietary and royalty-free, providing application portability to any platform that wishes to support it. We expect that Vulkan will ship on Windows (including Windows XP, 7 and 8, not just Windows 10), Android, Linux and many other platforms. It has been an interesting design challenge to keep the level of abstraction low, but still provide portability across multiple architectures – but with the diverse perspective and expertise of the Vulkan working group we think we have succeeded.

Rashid K. Sayed: We know that Source 2 engine will take advantage of Vulkan. Can you talk more about this and how the API will influence its working?

Neil Trevett: Valve has been one the most active proponents and supporters of Vulkan and they have stated that Vulkan will be acritical component of SteamOS and future Valve games.The key design goals for Vulkan are to reduce driver complexity and overhead to provide a portable and predictable API platform with maximum flexibility and performance as demanded by advanced applications, middleware and engines – and so is an ideal fit for Valve’s needs.

Rashid K. Sayed: Vulkan’s nature as an OS agnostic API makes it extremely viable for mobile developers. Can you talk about the other advantages it presents?

Neil Trevett: Many key hardware trends are being driven from mobile devices and the single Vulkan framework is designed to support, mobile, embedded and desktop systems and there will be no need for a ‘Vulkan ES.’ Some of the key architectural considerations include: tiling renderers are common in mobile and have to be supported as efficiently as immediate mode architectures; a unified memory rather than a traditional PC with a PCI-Express bus between the CPU and GPU enables radically new memory management strategies; and multi-core devices are now very common and so it is essential that Vulkan enables effective multi-threading performance.

Rashid K. Sayed: The layered design of Vulkan enables multiple IHVs to plug into a common, extensible architecture for code validation, debugging and profiling during development without impacting production performance; this layering flexibility is expected to catalyze strong innovation in cross-vendor GPU tools.

Neil Trevett: It is also very significant that Vulkan and OpenCL 2.1 are now sharing a core intermediate language technology called SPIR-V, the Khronos Standard Portable Intermediate Representation, which is the first IR to natively support both graphics and parallel programming. SPIR-V splits the compiler chain, enabling high-level language front-ends to emit programs in a standardized intermediate form to be ingested by Vulkan or OpenCL drivers.

"Vulkan, a new generation explicit API, has simpler drivers which means reduced driver overhead resulting in higher performance for CPU-limited applications. For applications that are CPU limited, which happens on desktop, and even more on mobile, end users should notice better performing applications with less stuttering and halting. "

Eliminating the need for a built-in high-level language source compiler significantly reduces GPU driver complexity and will enable a diversity of language front-ends. Additionally, a standardized IR provides a measure of shader IP protection, accelerated shader load times and enables developers to use a common language front-end, improving shader reliability and portability across multiple implementations.

Rashid K. Sayed: What advantages does Vulkan present to current gen GPUS and CPUS? How will this improve the game development process as compared to writing code for Mantle and DirectX 11?

Neil Trevett: Vulkan will run on any GPU hardware that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenGL 4.X and up – so many devices and platform will see an increase in application and game performance with just a driver update.

Vulkan, a new generation explicit API, has simpler drivers which means reduced driver overhead resulting in higher performance for CPU-limited applications. For applications that are CPU limited, which happens on desktop, and even more on mobile, end users should notice better performing applications with less stuttering and halting.

There will also be fewer functional differences between multiple GPU vendors’ implementations for faster, easier ports. Another fundamental advantage of handing the application more control is that the driver has to do less ‘behind the scenes’ management – resulting in much more reliable and predictable performance which doesn’t hit unexpected road bumps as the driver undertakes complex housekeeping.

Rashid K. Sayed: In that regard, how does the multi-threading support of Vulkan present an advantage over current APIs?

Neil Trevett: In the end, the multi-threaded work creation was the one architectural aspect that was not fixable with OpenGL’s monolithic context management system. With Vulkan, developers can construct any number of graphics, compute and DMA command buffers in memory, with the application having the freedom to use any thread management and synchronization it wants, before command buffers get submitted to a command queue.

Note that Vulkan has a general graphics and compute queue model that can be extended to more heterogeneous processing capabilities in the future. This architecture enables multi-core CPUs to assemble much more work for the GPU: enabling the full power of the GPU to be unleashed in many more applications.

Rashid K. Sayed: There is a lot of confusion and discussion regarding how Vulkan is different from DirectX 12. My readers know that it’s platform agnostic but given that both are set out to achieve the same thing, why is there a need for a separate API?

Neil Trevett: The OpenGL family – which includes OpenGL, OpenGL ES and WebGL – provides access to GPU acceleration on billions of devices and platforms, but we welcome healthy competition between open standard and proprietary APIs as it pushes both forward. In general, independent software vendors benefit from having to code, optimize and support their applications, libraries and engines on a minimum number of low-level APIs.

Hardware vendors can also reduce costs, in general, by having to support a minimum number of low-level APIs. Hence the overall desire to prevent industry fragmentation through open standards – and the wide industry support for Vulkan from both the hardware and software communities. DX12 is only available on Windows, and only Windows 10.

"Yes, Vulkan and DX12 take a broadly similar approach. Both APIs mean that application developers have to take more control, which is more involved in some ways, but in the real world developers spend much of their development time battling driver inconsistencies and unpredictability…"

Rashid K. Sayed: We recently spoke to a developer who believes that it will benefit developers if Vulkan makes it way to the PS4. The PS4 already has his own custom API. Do you think Vulkan will eventually make it to the console? And what kind of benefits it could potentially have given that PS4’s API and Vulkan are built from the same foundation?

Neil Trevett: Khronos cannot comment on any console vendor plans – but I agree that Vulkan is potentially very interesting for consoles – especially if AAA games engines have optimized Vulkan ports – it will mean that considerable AAA content could come easily to a platform that supports Vulkan.

Rashid K. Sayed: Cloud gaming seems to be rage these days on consoles and PCs. Is Khronos doing something that area?

Neil Trevett: PC instances in the cloud need the same cutting edge APIs to drive the GPU as if the application is running games locally. The performance and efficiency of Vulkan is just as important in the cloud as on your PC or console.

Rashid K. Sayed: Staying on the topic on cloud, there is a theory that static hardware such as consoles can be made more powerful by offloading stuff to the cloud. For example procedurally generated terrain is one of the most complex rendering that a developer can implement. Do you think Vulkan can help in such a scenario?

Neil Trevett: Yes – that is an interesting area for research and innovation. Vulkan can provide the same API for graphics and compute on the local device and the cloud – simplifying sophisticated load balancing of apps between local and remote resources.

Rashid K. Sayed: Continuing on from DirectX 12’s performance increase over DX11, how do you think AMD can equip Mantle in the coming days to offer a significant bump in performance compared to its current state?

Neil Trevett: AMD are not evolving Mantle as a production API – they are focusing all their effort on Vulkan and DX12 and have advised developers to do the same (head here for more information).

Rashid K. Sayed: DirectX 12 gives the developers plenty of control regarding how they want their applications to run. But this also means that there is a lot of top level stuff that the developer has to decide and implement. Does Vulkan work the same?

Neil Trevett: Yes, Vulkan and DX12 take a broadly similar approach. Both APIs mean that application developers have to take more control, which is more involved in some ways, but in the real world developers spend much of their development time battling driver inconsistencies and unpredictability – and in that respect that a Vulkan app could be actually easier to get fully debugged, and reliably performing across multiple platforms. For developers that don’t need all of Vulkan’s flexibility, there will be utility libraries and engines that that will layer over Vulkan to provide a much higher and familiar level of programming.

"Vulkan is the future of cross-platform graphics and compute – but Khronos is firmly committed to fully support and evolve the existing OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenCL APIs for as long as there is an industry need and demand."

Rashid K. Sayed: What is Apple’s reaction to Vulkan? Do you think they will drop Metal in favour of Vulkan?

Neil Trevett: Apple is a Khronos member but we cannot comment on whether Apple plans to support Vulkan on iOS or MacOS though they are free to do so if they wish. No application developer will be able to use Metal exclusively unless their business needs are met by shipping only on Apple and not on any other platform.

Rashid K. Sayed: What’s on the cards next for Vulkan? Could you tell us about any upcoming features you’re currently working on?

Neil Trevett: Because time is of the essence, we are ensuring that Vulkan 1.0 delivers all the essentials for a new generation API and sets a firm foundation for future evolution – but deferring any non-essential features to future versions. In any case we need real-world experience and feedback from Vulkan 1.0 to make data driven decisions for potential new features.

Rashid K. Sayed: What can we expect to hear more information on the API? Furthermore are there any plans to reveal any hard data and benchmarks results?

Neil Trevett: Vulkan is on schedule to have specs and implementations before the end of the year. Benchmark data will start to appear once first public implementations are available. The Vulkan working group started work in June 2014 when it became clear that industry was ready for a ground-up re-design of GPU APIs. There is a lot of energy and effort going into defining Vulkan – it is not a normal, multi-year, standardization effort – it will be completed much faster than that…

Rashid K. Sayed: Is there anything else you want to tell our readers before I let you go?

Neil Trevett: Vulkan is the future of cross-platform graphics and compute – but Khronos is firmly committed to fully support and evolve the existing OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenCL APIs for as long as there is an industry need and demand. These APIs are pervasively available on billions of devices and will ship for many, many years to come. With Vulkan, Khronos has now added to a rich mix of technologies so that we can evolve the roadmap for open standard graphics and compute. Khronos is dedicated to continuing to ensure that developers are able to access APIs with cutting edge capabilities and wide portability to help maximize the commercial success of their applications.

To top this achievement, AMD is already a part of the current generation of consoles with its APU architecture. The current generation of consoles i.e. PS4 and Xbox One will probably sell over 120 million units combined in their life cycle so there is a guaranteed success ratio for AMD, not to mention the fact they have been continuously innovating with bringing out powerful GPUs at decent price points.

In short there is a lot happening at AMD. So in order to know more I sat with AMD’s Head of Global Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock to know where the company is heading in terms of Mantle, its potential competition with DirectX 12, the emergence of Free-Sync, the lack of any new CPUs from the company until 2016 and more.

Rashid Sayed: We are now heading into the first year of the new consoles [PS4 and Xbox One]. How does AMD feel about the success of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One?

Robert Hallock: AMD is thrilled to be at the heart of the current-gen consoles! Powering great gaming experiences across console and PCs is already beginning to have obvious cross-platform benefits, too, and we’re very excited about that.

Rashid Sayed: I wanted to ask about Mantle and the efforts you are putting to make it a widely accepted API. Although we have seen several AAA developers adopting it, there are claims from certain developers that Mantle is only a temporary solution before DirectX 12 launches. What are your thoughts on this?

Robert Hallock: Mantle and DirectX 12 are complementary tools. Of course Mantle is particularly well-suited for AMD hardware, which allows us to expose future hardware features that might not be present in DirectX. For reasons like this, game developers are already telling us that they want Mantle and DirectX to coexist. Developers from Firaxis and Oxide Games have posted public blogs to this effect. From the perspective of a developer, it just makes sense. As the age-old adage goes: the right tool for the right job. You don’t throw your screwdriver away because you currently need a wrench.

"CPU-bound scaling is a function of the game’s API calls on the producer thread vs. the CPU’s ability to prepare those calls in the command buffer for the GPU’s consumer thread. Memory doesn’t play much of a role there."

Rashid Sayed: Staying on Mantle, the API is compatible with HLSL. How are you making optimizations and tuning so that it is compatible with DirectX 12 in the future?

Robert Hallock: We will share more on the future of Mantle in the coming months. We’re very excited about what lies ahead.

Rashid Sayed: Mantle’s API has been slated similar to the PS4’s API. Do you think for the developer it will be easier to port between a PC game [using Mantle] and PS4?

Robert Hallock: We have previously commented that Mantle’s similarities to console API streamlines the path from console to PC and vice versa. We talked about it in our blog here.

Rashid Sayed: In my opinion, AMD is in a better position than its competitor and that is primarily due to your 100% share in the console market. Is it safe to assume that the technology used for PS4/Xbox One’s APU has laid the foundation of the future AMD hardware?

Robert Hallock: I can say this: AMD is constantly innovating. We have incredibly talented engineers at the helm—like Raja Koduri, Joe Macri and Jim Keller—that are literally defining the future of our industry. We’re very confident in that future, and we will be talking about it when the time is right.

Rashid Sayed: Talking about CPUs, AMD had done its fair share of work in that field. CPUs are still using DDR3 memory whereas GPUs are already on GDDR5, which obviously results into performance and bandwidth bottlenecks. Do you think with the adoption of DDR4, this can be resolved?

Robert Hallock: I do not believe DDR3 memory presents any sort of bottleneck to a modern graphics card. CPU-bound scaling is a function of the game’s API calls on the producer thread vs. the CPU’s ability to prepare those calls in the command buffer for the GPU’s consumer thread. Memory doesn’t play much of a role there.

"We pitted the AMD A10-7850K with Mantle against the Intel i5-4690 with DirectX at1080p, low preset, a huge number of draw calls. The A10-7850K delivered 32 average FPS at 80W system power vs. 15 FPS at 65W system power. That’s a performance/watt advantage of 1.7x in AMD’s favor."

Rashid Sayed: There will be no new CPU architecture from AMD till 2016. The CPU evolution hasn’t been able to keep up with the GPU and this will further slow down the process. What are your thoughts on this?

Robert Hallock: I think that smart software, empowered with the ability to properly utilize multi-core CPUs, is making a big difference in the competitive landscape. For example the game Thief, which offers Mantle support,clearly shows AMD processors in the lead at resolutions used by millions of gamers.

Mantle is also proving that AMD processors can have a significant power efficiency advantage over competing processors when they’re properly utilized by a fully multi-core graphics API. I’ll give you an example: we analyzed the performance of the Star Swarm stress test. It’s available for free on Steam, and offers support for Mantle and DirectX 11. We pitted the AMD A10-7850K with Mantle against the Intel i5-4690 with DirectX at1080p, low preset, a huge number of draw calls. The A10-7850K delivered 32 average FPS at 80W system power vs. 15 FPS at 65W system power. That’s a performance/watt advantage of 1.7x in AMD’s favor.

Looking elsewhere, we’re seeing a 58% speedup in JPEG decoding using OpenCL-accelerated decode. People take pictures every day with digital cameras and smartphones, and transfer those photos to their PCs for editing and review. People used to think that the thumbnails for these pictures rendered very slowly because of CPU IPC bottlenecks or sluggishness in hard disk subsystem, but that’s clearly not true. It’s an API problem. AMD is solving that API problem in applications, too, with our work on OpenCL and HSA.

All of these scenarios prove that smart software is radically changing the competitive landscape. We are proving each and every day that there is a lot of room to improve the synergy between the software and the excellent potential of our hardware. And when that’s done, boy is it a different world.

Rashid Sayed: From a top level, can you tell us about how 4K adoption is improving and what kind of R&D are you guys doing for the future of 4K technology?

Robert Hallock: If you think back to the launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X, our graphics card marked arguably the first time anyone could reasonably expect to play games at 4K on a single GPU. Sure, there were some games that needed two for peak image quality, but one was and is pretty solid for the majority of titles. We were also the first company to offer full support for 4K SST displays in our driver. 4K adoption is very popular amongst the elite enthusiasts, but understandably slower being adopted in lower-end segments. I couldn’t characterize the rates with hard numbers as that’s not my area of expertise, but this is the sense I’m getting from interacting with the AMD community every day.

Ultimately, the evolution of GPU horsepower is the biggest factor in driving 4K forward. Graphics being such an important part of our business, of course, you can count on great progress on that front as the years wind on.

"I personally do not envision 12GB being the standard, though lately we are seeing 8GB cards being advantaged. Reviewer data for games like Shadows of Mordor, for example, suggests that agame’s performance can improve by as much as about 15% on an 8GB card vs. a 4GB model."

Rashid Sayed: You guys do a fantastic job at getting high end GPUs at decent budgets but I wanted to ask about the silent, ongoing war between AMD and Nvidia for the ‘most power graphics card’. Although both companies have done an admirable joul in raising the bar higher, I am wondering if there is a practical implementation to these cards. Except the enthusiasts, whose numbers are extremely, do you see 12GB GPUs being the standard in the immediate future?

Robert Hallock: I personally do not envision 12GB being the standard, though lately we are seeing 8GB cards being advantaged. Reviewer data for games like Shadows of Mordor, for example, suggests that a game’s performance can improve by as much as about 15% on an 8GB card vs. a 4GB model. There are several 8GB AMD Radeon R9 290X GPUs entering the market from our partners to meet that challenge.

As far as “raising the bar” goes, I’m pleased that AMD continues to offer the world’s fastest graphics card: the AMD Radeon R9 295X2. It’s performance has gone unchallenged for months, and continues to receive praise for all aspects of its design.

Rashid Sayed: AMD is highly critical about Nvidia’s Gameworks but don’t you think this is anadd on for users who prefer Nvidia? Furthermore, is AMD working on a competitive solution?

Robert Hallock: AMD already makes game-enhancing graphics samples available for free in our public graphics SDK. Mantle was conceived to one day be a public SDK. Keeping this material free and open ensures that gamers can receive code from the developer that’s been vetted against, and optimized for, all industry hardware. The same cannot be said for Gameworks, which remains a mystery to developers unless they commit to a special license for which there are no public details.

Let’s be very clear: to date, Gameworks code has been forced to run on all graphics vendors – itis not isolated to Nvidia customers.Isn’t it disturbing that all of the Gameworks-enabled titles to date have not offered similar optimizations for AMD Radeon customers and have forced these customers to run code optimized for a different product, often at a penalty?That is a disservice to the significant percentage of the gaming public that runs AMD Radeon graphics, and it’s a disservice to the ingenuity of the developers.

Rashid Sayed: So besides Tress FX, we haven’t seen anything new announced for a while. What are you guys working on next?

Robert Hallock: I cannot speculate on the future, but we’re very excited about what TressFX 2.0 is offering gamers and developers. We recently published a blog about the improvements, and I think people will appreciate the progress we have made.

Rashid Sayed: What is AMD doing in the mobile space, more specifically Mantle, especially given that DX12 will also launch on mobile?

Robert Hallock: Mantle is already compatible with any APU that features the Graphics Core Next architecture, be it a low-wattage APU or a more robust desktop chip. As it is widely known, Mantle makes a big difference for systems with more modest processors, much like the ones you would find in a tablet, so we’re excited about this synergy.

"Any IHV will be able to create a Mantle solution for themselves, and it is on them to decide whether or not they want to catch up to AMD in the area of low-overhead, high-throughput and incredibly efficient graphics workloads."

Rashid Sayed: AMD announced Free-Sync earlier this year. Not much is known about it. Will it be possible for you to provide some top level details on the same and whether it will also be available on PS4 and Xbox One in some form?

Robert Hallock: We maintain a public FAQ that contains a complete repository of all the information we’ve shared to date: how it works, why it’s a good solution, how DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync and FreeSync are related (and different!) and so on.

Rashid Sayed: So when one compares it to Nvidia G-Sync, what kind of advantages are you guys offering?

Robert Hallock: There are three key advantages FreeSync holds over G-Sync: no licensing fees for adoption, no expensive or proprietary hardware modules, and no communication overhead.

The last benefit is essential to gamers, as FreeSync does not need to poll or wait on the display in order to determine when it’s safe to send the next frame to the monitor. You can learn more about how that works here. Ultimately, it’s designed for smooth/stutter-free/tearing-free gaming. Couldn’t be simpler!

Of course user cost is also important, and eliminating the need for expensive/proprietary modules in the monitor is a great way to encourage reduced product cost. Not charging licensing fees to manufacturers, because we pursued an open industry standard, is also a great influence on total user cost.

We think it’s shaping up to be the ideal solution for gamers.

Rashid Sayed: Switching back to Mantle once again, Intel had approached for access to API. Is there any progress on that front?

Robert Hallock: Other IHVs will receive access when we exit beta and make the API public for download. Any IHV will be able to create a Mantle solution for themselves, and it is on them to decide whether or not they want to catch up to AMD in the area of low-overhead, high-throughput and incredibly efficient graphics workloads. At this time, though, Mantle is still being privately developed by AMD and nearly 100 ISVs.

Ever since the Windows 10 event that took place earlier this week, there is a lot of expectation regarding DirectX 12 and how it can possibly change the games development scene on Xbox One and PC. Stardock’s CEO Brad Wardell has shared his thoughts about the new API as well as AMD’s Mantle in a number of tweets.

As expected the true potential of DirectX 12 will only start showing when developers start using them in the right manner. This same thought is echoed by Brad as DX 12 won’t improve the visuals and performance magically. According to Brad, a number of effects will become easier with both Mantle and DX12, such as temporal aliasing, object space rendering, and support for tons of light sources which will result into games looking more profound and subtle. In fact, he is already implementing those in Mantle already.

However, Brad also believes that PS4 will also have something in store. He teases that fans will soon have something to rejoice about. Perhaps, he knows that something is going to be announced soon. Most of the stuff that Sony does with PlayStation’s technology is behind closed doors since they use a custom API for the PS4. Who knows, may be they are having a closed door session at GDC this March. Regardless, this goes to show that both consoles will eventually get better with time. And finally, Brad thinks that both PS4 and Xbox One have capable hardware but is puzzled as most games are running at 30 frames per second on them.

It’s indeed intriguing to know that both PS4 and Xbox One will keep their respective pace with new technology. We simply can’t wait to see what this brings to the table in 2016 and further ahead in the future.

AMD’s Mantle has seen its fair share of implementation in AAA games but there are claims from certain developers that it is only a temporary solution before Microsoft’s DirectX 12 launches next year on PC, Xbox One and mobile devices. So are these claims true and can Mantle and DX12 can both co-exist together?

Mantle and DirectX 12 are complementary tools. Of course Mantle is particularly well-suited for AMD hardware, which allows us to expose future hardware features that might not be present in DirectX,” AMD’s Robert  Hallock said to GamingBolt.

“For reasons like this, game developers are already telling us that they want Mantle and DirectX to coexist. Developers from Firaxis and Oxide Games have posted public blogs to this effect. From the perspective of a developer, it just makes sense. As the age-old adage goes: the right tool for the right job. You don’t throw your screwdriver away because you currently need a wrench.”

It will be intriguing to see how the two co-exist when DX12 launches next year but Robert definitely has a valid point and performance charts released by Futuremark does show that both APIs seem to have similar performance as far as draw features are concerned. Stay tuned for our full interview with AMD in the coming days.

AMD recently held a presentation in Singapore talking about the future of GPU technologies. The event was titled Future of Compute and it was attended by the industry’s top developers. During the event, Futuremark’s Oliver Baltuch took center stage to gauge the differences between DirectX 12, DirectX 11 and Mantle.

Futuremark’s provides PC and mobile benchmark tools which includes 3DMark. Using 3D Mark, Oliver showcased the difference between DirectX 12 and Mantle. Surprisingly the performance of draw calls on both the API is similar but when one compares it to DX 11, it’s almost 7.5 times greater.

Draw Call is one of the performance parameter which is an indication of how many objects can be drawn on the screen and it seems like DX12 and Mantle have the same capacity. Now we are not sure whether this will hold true in case of practical implementation as AMD’s Mantle is still being adopted by developers and DX 12 is still a year away.

Other advantages of DX12 include 50% reduction in CPU cycles and bottlenecks in a dual GPU configuration. It should possibly benefit the Xbox One as well since it uses an API which is similar to DirectX.

Gamebase’s Gamebryo may be the most under-rated engine of all time, having found use in games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Rift, Defense Grid: The Awakening and much more. GamingBolt had a chance to speak marketing director Bryan Tarlowski and Gamebryo lead engineer Yoonjae Hwang about the future of the engine.

We asked if AMD Mantle integration is on its way to Gamebryo or whether DX12 would be capable enough to provide low level access. “Our engineers have been testing Mantle. Mantle enables us to share many rendering code for Xbox One and PS4 and brings many benefits even on PC like explicit Multi-GPU management. Also Mantle exposes more low-level features than DX12 as extensions. Although we are going to inevitably support DX12 as well, Mantle is definitely the key technology that we’d like to adopt for consoles and high-end PCs.”

Despite the hype though, AMD Mantle has seen a fairly slow adoption rate. DirectX 12 will be out next year (it will reportedly ship with Windows 10) so there’s still plenty of time to speculate its impact on the industy. Thoughts on the power of Mantle? Let us know below.

Battlefield 4 continues to be updated for current and next gen consoles with the latest update introducing a range of fixes and a few new additions for players.

One of the key new features is the ability for Xbox One players to communicate to other via VOIP chat in Commander Mode. So if you’re playing the game via the Commander App, you can now issue commands to players through voice on your tablet.

Other new additions include adding Conquest Small to the Xbox One and PS4 versions while also bringing a new competitive Obliteration mode to the forefront. You’ll find the usual weapon rebalances and bug fixes as well in this update. PC users running Mantle can rejoice as DICE has fixed a low frame rate issue caused by those using multi-GPU Mantle settings.

You can check out the full update notes over here. What are your thoughts on the new additions? Let us know in the comments.

During the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Crysis developer Crytek announced that their in-house game development engine CryEngine was be supported by AMD’s Mantle API. This was recently revealed by EA Frostbite technical director Johan Andersson on Twitter, along with the above image of CEO Cevat Yerli on stage.

AMD Mantle has been touted for months now to improve overall gaming performance and development on PCs. Battlefield 4 was supplanted with an update to Mantle not too long ago, and it appears that future Crytek titles will benefit from the increased performance. Does it mean that Mantle could come to consoles if Crytek develops, say, a sequel to Ryse? Maybe not, but it does add some more power to the ever beast-like CryEngine.

What do you make of the announcement and AMD Mantle’s support for CryEngine? Will it be enough to counter Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX 12 reveal, especially given their Xbox One angle? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

AMD was present at CES 2014 to show off many things, but included a few new developments about their upcoming low-level PC API Mantle. The company showcases DICE’s Battlefield 4 running on the API and you can check out a short bit of it in the video above.

As of now, there’s no direct comparison between Battlefield 4 running on DirectX and Mantle, but AMD claimed that the game runs 45 percent faster on Mantle. The API will be available later this month for Battlefield 4 and it will certainly be interesting to see the performance boost considering that Battlefield 4 is already one of the best looking PC games of all time.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming API and do you notice any differences with Battlefield 4 in comparison to it running on DirectX? Let us know your comments below. Meanwhile, we’ll stay tuned in the coming weeks as Mantle is released and tested further.

True to their course thus far, yet another delay Battlefield 4 delay has been announced. This time it’s the AMD Mantle patch, which is intended to update the games visuals and the speed with which they are rendered.

A DICE representative gave the following comment regarding the delay:

“After much consideration, the decision was made to delay the Mantle patch for Battlefield 4. AMD continues to support DICE on the public introduction of Mantle, and we are tremendously excited about the coming release forBattlefield 4! We are now targeting a January release and will have more information to share in the New Year.”

The source of these delays, according to a representative from AMD, is due to the decision from EA to halt all further game development until all bugs in the current versions of the game have been dealt with. It is unclear how long that process will take at this time.

Stay tuned to Gamingbolt for updates on when we can expect further development for Battlefield 4.

Source: Polygon