New Innovations: Low-level APIs for games, and GPUs with dedicated Audio

Advanced Micro Devices,  a leading innovator in CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology is set to unleash their next generation of graphics card sometime between this fall and this spring. Their new innovations besides the usual Direct X version refresh involves the introduction of a technology labeled AMD TrueAudio. With this generation of cards AMD is also releasing their own Graphics API namely, Mantle, to give programmers more control of their graphical applications.

AMDs new marketing model for these next generation graphics cards holds a  R followed by # to designate the card's class. R5, will be the entry level cards; R7 Gaming; lastly R9 to represent enthusiast level graphics cards. In the past each lower class would lack features, while each progressing class added additional features. This is still true, except for AMD TrueAudio, since each class will have cards that include TrueAudio and cards that do not have TrueAudio.

TrueAudio, is AMDs attempt at the first graphics card within recent years to include dedicated sound components at the hardware and software level. AMD TrueAudio will reduce the load from the Central Processing Unit, and allow the graphics card to process the audio, and even position it, improving overall performance.

AMD's other new innovation is Mantle, a low-level API. Before progressing, lets touch up on current Generation APIs. While Direct 3D and Open GL are already great APIs, they are optimized as mostly an at the upper-level. The idea behind mantle is that it is a low-level API, allowing programmer to have more control of their games and graphical programs as lower level is closer to the hardware level. 

Mantle also has potential in the game console market, as opposed to exclusively the computer market.
Both upcoming generation game consoles, such as the Playstation 4 and Xbox One are to include AMD graphics, and are also rumored to implement mantle in numerous titles to improve the overall performance in titles utilizing the new API.

Source:  AMD Unveals Next-Generation Radeon Graphics Cards, On-GPU Audio Processing, Proprietary Mantle API.
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