Johan Anderson, Technical Director on Frostbite Engine at DICE, in a presentation at AMD’s Developer Summit 2013 or APU13 revealed some information on how PlayStation 4’s libraries and AMD’s Mantle API will drive future Frostbite designs.
In a slide presentation, Anderson showed how PlayStation 4’s graphics API has great performance and programmability and that DICE will share concepts, methods and optimization strategies for further development of Frostbite Engine. Anderson also stated that that Mantle’s API and PlayStation 4’s libraries are a lot similar than Mantle and DX11.
Johan Anderson’s address on PlayStation 4 and Mantle transcribed:
We do have to build and continue to maintain our OpenGL and DirectX rendering path but we really try to avoid limiting ourselves to what we can do in those APIs. So I think going forward, the main things to drive the design we have in Frostbite and the type of optimisations we will do, will be what we can do with Mantle, and also what we can do with PS4. PS4 also has its own graphics API that’s really quite programmable and really a lot of good control and performance from it, so we can share concepts, methods and various types of hardware level optimisations between those and see where we end up with that, which is quite exciting.
AMD has provided the GPU for both the next-generation consoles this time. This means that PlayStation 4’s libraries are much more accessible and compatible with Mantle than Xbox One’s. This keynote address by Anderson however, puts John Carmack’s claim to rest that Sony and Microsoft will both be hostile towards Mantle’s development for the PC.
Currently, DICE’s latest title, Battlefield 4, runs at native 900p resolution on the PlayStation 4. Going by what John Anderson has stated, this means that PlayStation 4 will enjoy DICE’s titles as the leading platform over its competitor.
It was also revealed recently that PlayStation 4 is using AMD’s TrueAudio DSP. With this new technology, PlayStation 4 can enjoy more impressive audio output, just like a high-end PC.
What are your thoughts on this? Mantle and PlayStation 4 bode well? Let us know in the comments below.
