Posted by Nathan Kirsch | Tue, Dec 15, 2015 - 8:00 AM

When AMD released the Mantle API they gave more control of the GPU to developers than ever before and we’ve seen low-level access to the GPU continue with the more recent release of DirectX 12 by Microsoft. The Radeon Technologies Group wants to continue to bring this level of access to the PC space and have announced unprecedented GPU control with GPUOpen.

GPUOpen will give Game developers direct access to GPU hardware along with a large collection of open source effects, tools, libraries and SDKs. This is being done to allow game developers to get the maximum performance from the hardware and it should also help the sharing of knowledge and for better graphics innovation in games.

The GPUOpen gaming components will include libraries and samples along with tools that are all coming direct from AMD. AMD has over 200,000 registered Oculus developers along on the virtual reality side, so there are hundreds of thousands of PC and console game developers that are making cutting edge game titles that will benefit from this movement.

RTG plans on having GPUOpen resources available (libraries and samples) on GitHub in January 2016 and the RTG software will be available without restriction thanks to the use of the MIT license. AMD sees GPUOpen is the primary vehicle to allow low-level access to the GPU.