Good to know: What is Mantle?

11.03.2019

The next part of our small graphics API series will be a little more specialized: We will look at the special features of AMD’s Mantle.

Mantle is a programming interface (API) for graphic outputs. It was released in 2013 and was developed by AMD, originally together with the Swedish company Dice, whose PC game Battlefield 4 was the first game with Mantle. The API should be an alternative to OpenGL and Direct3D (= a part of DirectX).

Good to know: What is OpenGL?

What distinguishes Mantle from other graphics APIs?

Mantle is a so-called low-level API, i.e. a lean programming interface. "Low-level" means that the API enables programming close to the system. Similar to programming on consoles, developers have more control and can use the existing hardware more effectively. This increases the performance of the CPU and graphics unit. In addition, the driver overhead (= data that is only required for transferring or saving and is not primarily used) and the memory requirement are reduced and multithreading is simplified. More information and a detailed test report can be found at golem.de.

Is Mantle cross-platform?

In part: Mantle supports the GPUs in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but not the graphics chips from other PC hardware manufacturers such as Intel or Nvidia.

What does the future hold for Mantle?

Due to strong competition from other cross-platform APIs, AMD announced in March 2015 that it would no longer be developing Mantle. Instead, DirectX12 and Vulkan, which is based on Mantle, were recommended.