Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: James <wireless@×××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] Mantle Open source GPU engine
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 15:02:46
Message-Id: loom.20131004T132426-272@post.gmane.org
1 Howdy one and all,
2
3 Well I heard about about AMD's push, referred to as Mantle
4 to unseat DirectX as the defacto gaming platform (yawn)...
5
6
7 But recently, an egg_head mathematician that irritates me
8 from time to time, called me in the middle of the night.
9 He, being an eceptionally bright and difficult humnoid; would
10 not shut up at what AMD is doing.
11
12 Finally it seems that an open source, raw hardware access
13 API is going to allow truely unfettered access to the
14 computational blocks inside of a GPU. (ok now I was awake).
15
16 Upon googing this am, I do see quite a buzz, particularly
17 since all Nvidia would have to do, is decide to implement
18 the open source -- open standard access to the bare metal
19 of the GPU. This should not be taken likely as it is akin
20 to all of the FPGA hardware folks giving away the billions
21 of dollars in IP, software and integration tools that make
22 building a custom processor, possible. Those tools are locked
23 away, due to expense and the business approach of hardware
24 vendors asking for money each time they reveal the tricks,
25 trade secrets and heuritical methods to build low level components.
26
27 What this means is that MANTLE is a game changer and opens
28 up "bare metal access" to multitudes of ordinary computational
29 and recreatioal computer weenies....(whoa Pee!)
30
31
32 If this is true, it is a GAME CHANGERS (could not resist the pun).
33
34
35 So:
36 A. it is time for me to dig into this issue.
37 B. Are any of the folks on this list working to get
38 Mantle support available on Gentoo?
39 C. Anyone tested one of the "Hawaii" radeon cards?
40 D. Anyone working on running SteamOS virtualize on (gentoo) linux?
41
42
43 as always, your thoughts are most welcome
44
45 James
46
47 [1]
48 http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-linux-driver-support-after-valves-steamos-announcement.html
49
50 [2] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-gcn-battlefield-4,24418.html

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Mantle Open source GPU engine Bruce Hill <daddy@×××××××××××××××××××××.com>