hi guys um Jensen's gone right um I wanted to ask I want to ask what you
guys thought of mantel um just to see since you guys are considered luminaries
and large developers uh what you guys
think oh you guys start okay I mean I
know my opinion on it is I in terms of
action I question Nidia have a response
to mandle and I think that's unequivocally know they should you know
it would be I think a horrible mistake if some reason you know somehow NVIDIA
got panicked by this and made some lower level NVIDIA API you know you already
have very good low-level access through the the GPU extensions that Nidia has
always rolled out know ahead of anywhere else give you as much performance as you
want to trade the inconvenience of doing Invidia proprietary stuff on them now
mantle is inde AMD has talked many times
in the past about close to the metal type architectures and it only ever
became interesting because of their dual console if it was just a way to to do on
the PC be a little bit more uh you know lower level for them I couldn't have
cared less I the landscape does matter
that they have both the major console WIS with a similar architecture that you
can get on the PC developers will be making systems architectural changes
that favor those um so I think it it's not a stupid thing
for AMD to be doing at this point there's some benefits that they can reap
from it it could have implications for steam steam box type things there um but
I they're probably if Microsoft and Sony both embraced it that would be very very
powerful for AMD but it doesn't look like they're going to at least Microsoft
from the you know words that they're mouthing so I I mean if I was still
doing all of the you know all of the B major technology coding for I for nextg
game stuff I probably would not be embracing mantle right now uh but it
would be there would be days when it would be extremely tempting but when I
would dispassionately step back and look at it I probably wouldn't come down on
the side of saying it's it's worth the effort there obviously others come to
different conclusions sure uh there's some good
ideas and the we really liked the idea
of having low level low overhead access to the GPU I mean if you look back at
what's in both directex and openl there's a lot of overhead in those apis
and the multiple layers of them and the fact that they date back to you know the
old STI model of Hardware rendering which is very very different than the
modern Shader based programming model that we have now you know where you have
potentially unified memory and a lot of
processing power available in the GPU and lots of ways of sharing data that go
beyond just calling a ton of API functions for everything little thing
you want to do uh so there are good ideas there I hope that uh really helps
the openg go committee and Microsoft shape their future apis I me if you ask
me would I much prefer to have a low-level API for accessing the GPU the
answer is yes but five of them each for
different uh hardware architectures and vendor and operating systems absolutely
not that is the wrong direction for the industry to go um and to have yet
another AP and the PC that's still different than the standard PC DirectX
API and it's different than the open GL op es that exists on Mac and Android and
iOS and it's different than the PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4's lowlevel
rendering API and it's different than what Microsoft provides in Xbox I I
don't think it's a a good
idea yeah
so no one of the key things about it is
and one of the main reasons we're doing is that it's not a replacement uh
there's it's not designed that way at all uh the idea is that we we can solve
some of the long-term problems that we've actually been having on the PCS
platform all the stuff we've been talking about today of getting robust
performance consoles type type of of of
robust stable performance uh those are things we can experiment and work with
with M we do that with d3d and we do that with GL also of course uh this is
another Avenue you can see uh it's also really interesting of just essentially
opening up something that we're quite familiar with already we've been
spending well essentially last two years working on the nexan consoles and the
architectures are the same we intimately familiar with with with those architectures and it's a good fit there
just as as described and I see even
though we're not done with our work with it and is definitely not not not done
yet either to be to be shipped out uh I still see it as a as a success even
right now actually just because of these conversations and the amount of things
that actually the amount of developments and the amount of sort of both
enthusiasm and even the opposite of enthusiasm all the type of um it's been
bit stale you could say in in especially in the PC graphics Microsoft they switch
Focus for for quite some time over to to other things which they probably really
didn't need to do uh but I I think now
going forward it's a really exciting opportunity both on the on the pieces
basis and stuff we're experimenting with mental and learning on the Souls but
also mobile as we discussed before of of okay what should be the future Graphics
pipelines there there's a lot of movement in all of these things and it's it's just good to have lots of different
Avenues to experiment uh and actually hopefully deliver concrete value uh in
things but I completely agree with both John and Tim that if NVIDIA would do
their own API and then Intel would do an API and then qu would do an API that's
not a future want to be that that would be a bad future uh that would be very
very a lot of work you mark moft and Kronos does play an important part of
all of all this and um I hope M will be
quite influential in in in in many these aspects also and what we're doing right
now also specifically with with DD is is just a start um thank you yeah you
you've used the API where we've just read the spe or the marketing materials
um what would you say is the the two questions what do you think is the cost
of like in man years or whatever of implementing manal support in
Battlefield and what do you think it's the ultimate gain on PC like could you
try to quantify that it it's it is too early to quantify we've been very busy
just making sure our game works overall and actually sh sh shipping it out we're
almost done with it uh so it's too early
to say we'll have a lot more information in November mid November talk more about
it and it will be interesting to see I think it's important also to one one
thing that people well General people that are not developers it can be
difficult to understand that when it comes to bits it's actually it's not not
like the ball okay we solve this one we're done go home and the game Run as
well and ball next is like wack you you
find fix one and then you thought that that was the thing you made that four
times faster and then the next B shows up after 10% of that Improvement of
course the biggest issue is that really you have to architect your large scale
Vision to take maximum Advantage no API
just all of a sudden really makes a dramatic difference on things because if
you buil a good game engine to you know to any API even if you magically made
all that API overhead vanish it doesn't make that much of a difference it's the
possibility of do I mean there's stuff on the gcns that I'm very excited about
some of the asynchronous pipeline cues for different things that would be great
to you know to take direct direct control over but then that's you know
you either design for that or you don't design for that it will be a gradual
approach also of sure we're doing Bel before it's not like Bel before is only
dedicated for a specific API and specific platform it's it's it's it's a
rich game there you want to work with something and and deliver concrete
benefits and evaluate and then go forward and and and see where we are and
hopefully in the future will design games based on many of the concepts that
we're proving out a lot earlier now than what we can do otherwise and I think
that that's actually a good change for the entire industry even though people
sometimes do get stuck up on on like the the overall thing thinking again oh the
same discussion as I had before of okay is mobile will replace all the PC no
that's that will not happen same that will not replace all of the ex or all of
the Y that they're complimentary well actually when use m is not complimentary
but it's compliment in the in the actual industry over all uh and you want that
competitiveness not necessarily by having five different apis but having
movement uh uh I think that's really really interesting cool I thanks I
appreciate it lot can you tell us tell us how much they pay for you to use
it actually that's let's let keep
having no I can answer a couple questions uh they didn't have to pay us
anything to use it I've been pitching these type of ideas for for many many
years for every single vendor uh and it's actually talking just about my my
own egoistic view of solving my own specific problems is that we see a lot
of stalls we see a lot of performance performance gone missing in many areas
that we actually want to get at that performance we want to learn how to
program a a machine on on a on a lower level that that has actually a really
really good architecture for for that and I think that's something that will
will sort of roll out going forward also
okay so it's good as an R&D platform for developers you me with and John you
were talking about the desire to have front bu for Access or something like
that lower level API would be more likely to provide that I think it's also
good if it pushes Microsoft and open go folks to improve their drivers by
realizing that hey you can actually achieve a lot more performance on PC
what the more lowlevel techniques um I think it would only be bad if the
outcome of this is that now we have to deal with five vendor specific apis for
AG GP yeah and also the vision for for
mantle well it can play out many ways you don't really you can't really say
for for sure uh but the vision for mantle is that it will it can become a
an API also that's something we're completely open for and something is open for also it's just that that's not
the right way to go at it initially there are those Aven Ed already with
cronas and with these this is open API
it wouldn't be a lowlevel well well actually I don't yeah I don't
fully agree sure you can make an API that's completely down to the level sort
of what you like on P we worked it was a
very very thin abstraction now but it was completely specific with that architecture I do think the way modern
gpus work is is quite different from
from how the DX or you absolutely the G
design was from from the beginning there there are extensions at Le in De Land
where you can access many things but there there are commonalities between
like binding for example that's an awesome thing that has been working on
with with with G that is really the future for all GPS and if you ask the
different vendors uh even people even vendors perhaps on mobile space that do
not have it yet they believe that is the future well now I'm talking for all
mobile MERS not but it makes sense as as a modern design
for that uh and you see some some convergence towards things that are
generally the designed and then some people are some Des
will come a little bit later for that but when it's a great fit for for for
key hardware and it's great fit for developers then I think well that's the
way will go like my point about unified memory is absolutely here and we really
need to get get down to gpus are just peers on the same memory pool as the CPU
and we really need like documented texture layouts and not noticing that
everything is coming soc's also so even the GPU is a combination of tons of
different processors a significant amount of process either if it's an bet
GPU or if it's an mgpu there's quite a lot of quite independent engines there
and that's something that's hidden from us now the GPU is something that you
from the CPU you prepare your commands you just give it to them and it has a
driver that tries to figure out which goes where that's just generally good
design to expose those things of living if you're trying to do something picky
like using the hardware video decompression stuff or then you know
re-encoding there you have to V to forand new API to get that Capt even
even even like compute for example compute is well one of the best use
cases compute is for graphics which is kind of uh yeah feels a little bit weird
but but it's not like you want to use it both tightly coupled with your with your
graphics and you want to use it completely separately that CPU drives
for for loading this and stuff and you want to have background tests that that
have U well can have really highly to see and run in the background and just
eat up whatever Victor units that are free on your GPU that's also generally
good design for even in the GPU space I'm hitting on these issues where I want
GPU task scheduling and we have no concept of prioritization between GPU
SKS where know we need to be able to specify time slices and priorities and
you know it's down being a CPU scheduler for a finite re and well like they take
quite a lot of time until we find a convergence to a a definite model there
and but in the meantime it's good to have a couple of models both from
hardware and from software sort of competing or or or being tested there uh
and see what sort of what's come s that because I do think there will be quite
interesting conver there's clearly a large map of
enthusiasm in the panel for gsync um is it thus fair to say that
you'll be playing the games that you're
developing
wow well if NVIDIA they have gsync they
have I have to say they have the
you don't you don't have M at all um it
starts getting a little bit tricky in my view yeah NVIDIA had mantle
and we had gsync or we had ideally all
vendors should have alls that would be the best solution
that the best solution for the industry but I think what you're seeing if you
look at it from a practic point of view you'll have first mover first mover uh
advantages for the for the companies that invest r& the effort and I should
bring something out uh something out there uh so I'll play the game on Clos so
forious reasons is the GC software side
of things and Hardware side on the the card is that going to be licensable to
like our Intel and afd going to be able to yeah we haven't precluded the notion
of it frankly you know we're first is trying to get it going get the ecosystem
going get the display guys going we had to change the GPU architectur get it
going and then every included any in the future that sounds like a softw
thinking yeah if only that pesky GC had
thing I'm just kidding I know Tim
John yeah well we primarily use invid Hardware at and we we buy L of
it that's
surprise I've got a light boost monitor on my desktop so I mean it'll probably
update to it yeah I heard my voice call
that uh we got the the voice of God over here telling us one more
question