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AMD's Answer to GameWorks: Open Source Tools, Graphics FX, Libraries and SDKs
- taspeotis 11y agoLast time I checked AMD was losing something like $200MM a quarter with around $750MM cash on hand. So they could be out of money in a year. NVIDIA isn't exactly losing this race ... why not just lock yourself in to GameWorks?
- sspiff 11y agoWell, there's the case for other platforms than PC. Also, maybe if you are a major studio who will with certainty release your game within 18 months, perhaps you should. But if you invest heavily and lock yourself to a specific SDK of a single vendor, you better hope the SDK survives and remains relevant.
- akerro 11y agoSo it is time to buy new CPU and GPU?
- creshal 11y agoAMD's finances have been miserable for ten years, and they always managed to find new investors.
- tormeh 11y agoIt's kinda weird, actually. I mean, AMD often has really interesting ideas that may be easy to sell, but execution is always bad and the brand is damaged.
- tankenmate 11y agoAMD's execution being bad has been provably Intel's fault at times; Intel has been proven to use anti-competetive contracts in the past with their customers (HP, Dell, etc), i.e. limit good CPU prices/discounts unless customers limit their use of AMD.
- creshal 11y agoThat was ten years ago. Ever since, AMD had a free playing field… not that it helped.
- valarauca1 11y agoAMD is playing a fair field, but they aren't innovating. Their top of the line processors haven't received changes in 2 years.
- ant6n 11y agoWell they are trying to innovate: hbm, apus, vr. The 22nm process node they wanted to use was cancelled, and now they're basically working to push it their 14nm products instead. Kind of such (edit:sux) for them to be fabless.
- valarauca1 11y agoThey'll have it. Zen will be 14nm process. I'm excited for Zen, AMD does good things when the wipe the board clean and start over.
- tankenmate 11y agoIt's in Intel's best interest that they can find investors; whether they have influenced this is an open question.
- akerro 11y agohttp://hackaday.com/2015/12/09/echo-of-the-bunnymen-how-amd-won-then-lost/ http://hackaday.com/2015/12/09/echo-of-the-bunnymen-how-amd-... for reference
- driverdan 11y agoDo you think your CPU and GPU will stop working if they go out of business?
- creshal 11y agoWell, the GPU at least would quickly become useless without driver updates. Every time a new AAA title is released, Nvidia and AMD scramble to work around game bugs inside their drivers because the developers don't care.
- tarpherder 11y agoThey care, but drivers contain bugs too. Your attitude seems overly negative without much argumentation. Are you sure your negativity is warranted?
- ghrifter 11y ago>> drivers because the developers don't care Yeah because developers have unlimited access to all sorts of GPU/CPU combos that the customers have...
- akerro 11y agoI meant, I need to buy new AMD CPU and GPU.
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- creshal 11y agoAssuming AMD runs out of money tomorrow, we'd still have an installed base of 50 or 60 million XBox Ones, PlayStation 4s and Wii Us that make use of AMD GPUs, together with a 25% market share on computers. > why not just lock yourself in to GameWorks? Because only Nvidia users benefit of it, which manages barely 55% of the PC market share – everything else is dominated by AMD or Intel (or, in the case of handhelds, various other companies).
- tankenmate 11y agoAnd in the long run if Nvidia dominates the market even Nvidia users won't benefit (or won't benefit as much as they could have).
- VT_Drew 11y ago>NVIDIA isn't exactly losing this race Because AMD has been putting out great cards the past few months, completely revamped their their driver software. Meanwhile NVIDIA has been doing not much of anything. The latest reports have shown AMD regaining market share in discrete CPU's and this trend will most likely continue. AMD has ZEN coming out next year, and they will probably be profitable again by the end of 2016. AMD isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
- andromeduck 11y agoreskin not revamp
- herbst 11y agoThats exactly why i buy AMD cards over Nvidia again and again. Who cares about super fancy graphics and yet another, 2% faster shader. Want i want is properly supported Hardware with working Open Source drivers from a company that has interest in its users hacking their own solutions, even when they get better than their properitary ones.
- creshal 11y agoAnd yet, 10 years ago the situation was exactly reversed, with ATi sabotaging early DirectX 9 to run worse on Nvidia cards, and ATi pushing a huge pile of proprietary solutions nobody ended up caring about – like TruForm (ATi brand tessellation) or Close-to-Metal (predecessor to Nvidia's CUDA, only when that proved more successful did ATi switch to pushing OpenCL). Brand loyalty is useless, because brands don't care about consumers.
- ant6n 11y agoAMD is so far behind at this point that it will take many years before they can leverage a strong market position to try to push some proprietary solution. If they survive at all.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoThis seems unfair considering ATI was bought by AMD and now has completely different leadership. The recent moves towards FOSS are pretty much post AMD buyout.
- unholythree 11y agoI agree, at the moment I use mostly AMD at home [i]because[/i] the lower end server processors I can afford don't have the feature sets gimped like Intel, and their consumer GPUs support IOMMU passthrough that NVIDIA needlessly restricts to professional cards. It may only be their weak market share that inspires their generosity, but it's hooked me and certainly has me rooting for their continued existence.
- krcz 11y agoUnfortunately that is something regular non-dev user doesn't care about much. And such users make most of the customers. I can only hope that Vulkan will change the game a little bit, so shader hacking won't affect perceived performance that much.
- sevensor 11y agoSometimes, the free market does something that really impresses me. This is one of those times. Here we have AMD releasing open source tools in an attempt to beat a competitor whose hardware is technically superior. Sure, this seems like a desparate measure from a company that's lost its way and will try anything to make a buck. And it's probably motivated by a desire to generate lock-in for their hardware. But that's capitalism!
- SXX 11y ago> And it's probably motivated by a desire to generate lock-in for their hardware. I don't see how MIT licensed code can generate lock-in for AMD hardware. Would you care to elaborate?
- sevensor 11y agoPerhaps I'm misreading it, but the announcement seemed to imply that the source code, however open, is for AMD hardware. So by open-sourcing it, they attempt to generate lock-in to the hardware, which is still just as proprietary as can be. In other words, I don't think that these tools will work on your NVidia GPU. Or not well, at any rate.
- SXX 11y agoYeah you misreading it because on slides there is few different things and some of them was already announced in past: * Open source game and rendering middleware, tools and most of it is for Direct3D11/12, but some things is OpenCL / OpenGL. None of it can be AMD-only because it's all based around standard APIs. Techs that Nvidia provide with GameWorks only support hardware acceleration on top of CUDA which is proprietary. * HSA-related stuff include compiler from CUDA. I'm not expert in this area, but HSA is also not just AMD-only thing and there is several companies backing it. * Linux graphics stack. It's of course AMD-only, but AMD announced that they'll open source their OpenCL and Vulkan implementation so other vendors may benefit of it. So no. They don't release things that can only be used with AMD GPUs or anything like that. What more important anyone can take MIT licensed code and turn it into the proprietary product, etc.
- oxide 11y agoAMD has consistently impressed me with stuff like this, definitely going AMD this time when it's time to upgrade the ol' GPU. Nvidia be damned.
- rasz_pl 11y agoAMD is very badly mismanaged. Ever since K8 engineering is again perceived as a source of cost. They lost $400mil on failed ARM servers idea without blinking an eye, but plain refuse to fund proper software support for their products because that would cost like 30-40 engineer salaries! :(. AMD is Commodore of this decade.
- omarshaikh 11y agoLooks like another attempt at grabbing a share from NVidia's CUDA ecosystem... Not gonna happen.
- singularity2001 11y agoThey better get into deep learning territory quicker!
- autobahn 11y agoAMD also released FreeSync, an open alternative to Gsync, a dynamic refresh-rate interface for monitors. The Nvidia version requires nvidia hardware and licensing and adds significant cost to the monitor, whereas freesync can be implemented in the control boards that already exist for the monitors, and without cost. I think they're both great graphics cards, but NVidia tries its best to stifle competition.
- BuckRogers 11y agoNV lost their bet on Gsync, it's just not apparant yet. Intel announced they're adopting the tech behind Freesync for their own IGPs. Gsync won't hold up against Intel Kabylake's IGP + AMDs APUs and GPUs. If the trend continues of Intel adopting AMD's open standard / libre alternatives to NV's tech, I'm not sure how NV can seriously stand against AMD + Intel using the same solutions. Intel IGPs are only going to get better and better and be more relevant over time, Broadwell Iris Pro was already impressive and Kabylake intends to take that to the next level.
- Diwoto 11y agoI'm all for AMD going open source with these tools (I love the fact they're doing this) but the reason that developers go with GameWorks in the first place is because Nvidia is able to allocate staff/resources to the game studios to assist in implementing.
- SXX 11y agoConsidering how bad GameWorks features perform in many PC games (e.g in some Ubisoft titles Nvidia-only features was dropped after release within first patches) this strategy doesn't work. Though I only heard good things about Nvidia OpenGL developers support and as far as I know they do support even devs who isn't part of "Meant to be Played" thingy. So I suppose many studios that don't even use Nvidia-only features prefer their middleware because of support. Sadly AMD is opposite and developers support for OpenGL just not exist. E.g you can send them emails, tickets and there won't be answer for months.