Technical talk from the AMD GPU14 Tech Day by Johan Andersson in the Frostbite team at DICE/EA about Battlefield 4 on PC which is the first title that will use 'Mantle' - a very high-performance low-level graphics API being in close collaboration by AMD and DICE/EA to get the absolute best performance and experience in Frostbite games on PC.
2. Long term relationship & collaboration
Worked together for 9 years
Started with Battlefield 2 back in 2004
Work very closely with multiple AMD teams
Developer relations, technology & driver teams
Focus areas: Quality, performance & robustness
Special features: Eyefinity, Stereo 3D, Crossfire
Special events: BF4 GDC demo – 2x 7990 and 4k @ 60 fps
Regular meetings with AMD hardware architects & key staff
Amazing & fun discussions to adapt & align future hardware & software
One can (and have!) affect GPU hardware design!
DICE & AMD
3. Our next-generation engine
Mission: Empower game creators and create
great games
The platform across Electronic Arts for
shooters, RPGs, RTS, racing games and more
FROSTBITE OVERVIEW
11. Optimized for DirectX 11.1 & Radeon GPUs
Been working closely with AMD on performance & quality – CPU & GPU
Microsoft added optimizations on our request to DX11.1 in Windows 8, thx!
64-bit native multi-core executable
32-bit fallback for the 9% that do not have a modern CPU
Frostbite has been parallelized further to run on up to 8 CPU cores
Scalability: From APU to multi-GPU
Optimized both for low-end & high-end
Scalable graphics
Crossfire & Eyefinity
BATTLEFIELD 4 - TECH
12. An amazing platform with unique strengths
From the lowest-end integrated laptop
To quad-GPU super high-end desktops
PC is in our DNA at DICE
It’s where we come from: Battlefield 1942
We strongly believe in & will continue to support
PC as a gaming platform
PC
13. Performance
Support both the slowest and fastest hardware
Not possible to utilize all CPU cores in DX & GL
Heavy CPU draw, state & resource overhead is
holding back complex game scenes & content
Programmability
PC is still stuck in software & memory model of
CPU spoon-feeding discrete GPU – no longer
required!
CPU/GPU collaboration barely possible
Not all modern GPU functionality is exposed
PC CHALLENGES
Hardware & software abstractions
Necessary to support a rich varied PC hardware
ecosystem, but…
Want to adapt our use cases & engine to the
capabilities of the hardware – not limit it to the
software layer on top of it
Have high-level information in the engine and
could do smarter & more efficient decisions than
the OS, driver or black box API can
APIs & abstractions evolve too slowly
(there are quite a few of them)
Limits how we can use modern GPUs & what game worlds we can build
14. As a contrast..
Develop only for a single hardware & system configuration
All hardware functionality exposed to developer (almost)
Low overhead OS
Very thin graphics driver
Explicit control over memory
Easier for us to develop & hit our targets with low-level access
Lots of experience now from the next-gen consoles, both based on AMD’s GCN architecture
CONSOLES
15. Push the PC industry forward & create amazing games
Massive dynamic & immersive worlds with photorealistic visuals
Not be constrained in capabilities due to software or legacy
Need the best of both worlds to fully utilize modern PCs
Console-style access & performance
While keeping scalability and running on tons of different PCs
Required: a different approach to graphics APIs & drivers!
Game engine (Frostbite) takes on large part of responsibility API & driver has today
Driver is a thin abstraction over the hardware
Key aspect: engine has explicit control over (most) memory & abstracted hardware components
Been talking to the graphics vendors for years to solve this…
WHAT WE WANT
16. An absolute highlight of our long term collaboration with AMD is coming to fruition:
Mantle
17. Low-level high-performance console-style graphics API for PC!
YAY!
Built by AMD in close collaboration with us at DICE/EA
Direct result of our discussions
Will be cross platform, very important for us
Battlefield 4 is the pilot project & first user of Mantle
Gamers will get the absolute best possible performance & experience out of AMD hardware
MANTLE
18. Frostbite 3 will render natively with Mantle on Windows
Used instead of DirectX 11 on compatible Radeon GPUs
Being developed right now!
Superb CPU performance
Very low overhead rendering, loading & streaming
Perfect parallel rendering - utilize all 8 CPU cores
Avoid bottlenecking the GPU and the system
Highly optimized GPU usage
Full access to graphics hardware capabilities
Lots of low-level optimizations made possible
Foundation for the future
This is only the beginning…
There are many more games on Frostbite
MANTLE IN FROSTBITE
19. Launches on October 29th
64 player multiplayer awesomeness
Advanced DirectX 11.1 renderer
Optimized for Radeon GPUs
Great Crossfire & Eyefinity support
In December: Mantle update!
Custom built & heavily optimized rendering pipeline in Frostbite
using Mantle
Get the absolute most out of your PC and Radeon GPU
Released as a free & automatic game update
Enjoy!
BATTLEFIELD 4
20. Super excited about Mantle!
Will share more in the upcoming months
Tons of ideas going forward
Low-latency multi-GPU rendering for VR?
Dynamic game worlds living on the GPU?
….
FUTURE