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.

1. Johan Andersson
Technical Director
Frostbite
AMD GPU’14 Tech Day
BF4 + FROSTBITE + MANTLE

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

4.  15+ games in development!
FROSTBITE GAMES

6.  Levolution
BATTLEFIELD 4 - QUICK HIGHLIGHTS

7.  Levolution
 Multiplayer water
simulation
BATTLEFIELD 4 - QUICK HIGHLIGHTS

8.  Levolution
 Multiplayer water
simulation
 VFX
BATTLEFIELD 4 - QUICK HIGHLIGHTS

9.  Levolution
 Multiplayer water
simulation
 VFX
 Compute shader lighting
BATTLEFIELD 4 - QUICK HIGHLIGHTS

10.  Levolution
 Multiplayer water
simulation
 VFX
 Compute shader lighting
 Post FX
 Bokeh DOF
 Subsurface scattering
 Velocity motion blur
 SSAA
BATTLEFIELD 4 - QUICK HIGHLIGHTS

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

21. THANKSTHANKS!
Email: repi@dice.se
Web: http://frostbite.com
Twitter: @repi