The Streamline is a Lie

The news of NVIDIA Streamline hit a couple of my "triggers" as you kids say nowadays, and I thought it was worth an editorial.  Everything here is my opinion and feel free to use it or copy and paste it in its entirety, all I ask is that you give HardOCP an attribution link buried somewhere in your usage.

An NVIDIA insider told me that NVIDIA jumped the gun on showing off their cooperation layer when it comes to "Streamline." That gives me some hope that this Streamline idea with Intel is not yet “baked.” 

Intel and AMD are both fully committed to their technologies first being open source for the game developers communities to be able to implement those as they see fit.  It seems that NVIDIA, known for its proprietary nature, is "leading from behind" and trying to further these open software technologies in their Streamline software, when honestly, nothing could be further from the truth.  NVIDIA knowing it is now behind the eight ball with Intel and AMD leading the open source charge, is trying to be seen as an arbiter of open source software, when it is in fact trying to cover its proprietary history with something "good for everyone" all of sudden.

First let's remember that AMD has GPUOpen. NVIDIA has GameWorks, and Intel has not named theirs yet to my knowledge.  GPUOpen is, as you would have guessed it, is open source.  NVIDIA GameWorks, on the other, and likely as you guessed it, is completely proprietary and very much mostly closed source, in that it has taken everything good from the open source community and implemented it into its GameWorks software, so again not fully closed, but mostly not open assuredly.  Do understand however that the GameWorks game development platform is still very much controlled by NVIDIA.  Even going back as far as Tessellation, think about how much control NVIDIA took over of the interface API.  This type of past behavior does not bode well for Intel nor AMD when looking forward to open source upscaling techniques.  There are certainly more examples we could go through as well.

Recently, THG wrote this "puff piece" on NVIDIA Streamline, or either I think they were just not thinking it through.  Either way it is worth a read.

This line from the article really made me wonder if Intel is even thinking about what it is doing by getting into bed with NVIDIA on this level. 

"Intel believes strongly in the power of open interfaces," said Andre Bremer, VP of AXG and director of game engineering at Intel. "We are excited to support Streamline, an open, cross-IHV framework for new graphics effects. This will simplify game developers’ integration efforts and accelerate the adoption of new technology."

Now that sounds great if you dress it up properly.  However, if you truly, and thoughtfully wanted to promote these new technologies, wouldn't you want to get these technologies to be part of a Microsoft DX revision rather than allowing NVIDIA to "own" an interface for all IHVs?  If "NVIDIA already has Intel onboard," it really makes me wonder about the future of our gaming APIs, as Streamline is only a good move for NVIDIA.

Streamline in my opinion is just another means of control in this space in so far as it removes the need for game developers to do anything other than use an API controlled by NVIDIA to accept FX plug-ins from vendors. I believe that this just is another way for NVIDIA to move things back into their proprietary solution while appearing to support open solutions.  NVIDIA is fearful of losing control of dominating the software space with developers and this is simply another grasp at control.