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Clip control on the Apple GPU

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Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#101
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow Leopard had few user-facing features, but it did have new APIs, such as Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, and also an optional 64-bit kernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

OpenCL is not an OS level API. I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations. GCD isn't OS level either, it's just a library, but it is at least a new API.

> I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations.

OpenCL was created and open sourced by Apple.

>OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia.

OpenCL 1.0 released with Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28, 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#History

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#102

Optimistic that OpenGL 2.1 will be available by the end of the year on Asahi - well that is news. It's only 2.1, but that's enough (as stated) for a web browser, desktop acceleration, and old games. Also RIP all the countless pessimistic "engineers" here and elsewhere saying we'd be waiting for years more for any graphics acceleration. Edit: It is true though that AAA Gaming will wait: "Please temper your expectation…

OpenGL 2.1 is not enough for browsers - Firefox requires OpenGL 3.2 for limited hardware acceleration support, and there will be limitations on Chrome as well. Desktop acceleration is a similar story, KWin will have a degraded experience for OpenGL less than 3. There is also the possibility of breakage due to missing extensions.

Most old games won't work because most are going to require OpenGL>=3. For D3D games from Windows, translation efforts have long been focused on Vulkan, and even then, you are very likely to require extensions which aren't present or further versions of OpenGL.

So that's to say that, it's not about AAA games, it's about Firefox, (full) KDE, and Minecraft. Which is going to take a few years, probably. There is no RIP, it's going about as well as those people were predicting - I'm expecting it's not going to be able to have full browser acceleration and play Minecraft until 2 more years at the very least.

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#103
This brings back memories of a computer graphics course. It was (re)implementing part of the OpenGL 1.3 pipeline in C++98 as a 2D triangle-to-trapezoid engine using the painter's algorithm (and then W- or Z-buffering). Coincidentally, it happened to use GLUT+GLU and work on Windows 98, Solaris, and Linux... circa 2001.

https://www.opengl.org/resources/libraries/glut/glut_downloa...

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rosetta supports emulating 32-bit code.

On Linux? I know it has been confirmed on macOS. I haven’t heard anyone say they ran 32 bit code on Linux.

I should double-check but I seem to recall the functionality being present, although of course nobody uses it

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#105
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vulkan is nice, but it goes into the other extreme. It's very low level and designed for advanced users. Even getting anything on the screen in Vulkan is intimidating because you have to write everything from scratch. I honestly believe that this is the major reason. Developing a hobby project with OpenGL is little more than using SDL or GLFW to get a window with a GLContext and then you can just start calling comm…

OpenGL is what you use if you just want to render some triangles on the GPU with a minimum of hassle on the most platforms (which is quite a few if you include GLES, WebGL, and ANGLE). Most people aren't writing graphics engines for AAA games so OpenGL is all they need.

It's a difficult API to do that with; it's as imperative and state based as you could possibly be and the error handling isn't exactly good. Surely there's easier cross platform libraries for it now.

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#106
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow Leopard had few user-facing features, but it did have new APIs, such as Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, and also an optional 64-bit kernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

OpenCL is not an OS level API. I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations. GCD isn't OS level either, it's just a library, but it is at least a new API.

libdispatch/GCD has kernel side integration in some parts for performance, though it can live without it.

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is software that approaches barely functional after dozens of rounds of QA testing, and then there is software that is implemented on a solid foundation with care and happens to have a few bugs. Unfortunately that many bugs in a beta implies the former. I think the thread comes from a disappointment that Apple is moving from the second category to the first.

But it is not even a "Consumer Beta" it is a developer beta- for catching bugs and allowing devs to create applications for new APIs while Apple polishes the build for release? Was snow leopard ever released as a dev beta even?

There wasn't a customer beta program at the time IIRC. Either way, as a dev you'd still want to test on an OS after a year of work even if there weren't "new features".

Bug fixes and performance work on the OS are even more likely to break your app than feature work is! Bug fixes in the OS are pretty likely to cause new bugs too…

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#108
post #95
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You acknowledge that Vulkan is too low level for people who aren't investing billions into an AAA graphics engine. And you surely know that OpenGL and Vulkan are the only two cross-platform graphics APIs. Are you sure you can't infer why people like OpenGL from those two points? Especially in Linux-heavy communities where DX and Metal aren't even options? I assure you, none of the "love" for OpenGL comes from the ele…

There should be more effort to support Direct3D under Linux. We have Wine and DXVK, but it should be easier to integrate the D3D support into Linux applications.

As well as Wine and DXVK there's also native Gallium Nine, which is `libd3dadapter9-mesa` in Debian.

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#109
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenGL is what you use if you just want to render some triangles on the GPU with a minimum of hassle on the most platforms (which is quite a few if you include GLES, WebGL, and ANGLE). Most people aren't writing graphics engines for AAA games so OpenGL is all they need.

It's a difficult API to do that with; it's as imperative and state based as you could possibly be and the error handling isn't exactly good. Surely there's easier cross platform libraries for it now.

I think that still falls under more than "putting a few triangles on the screen".

If you're doing anything advanced with OpenGL, yeah, debugging it is a pain and the statefulness isn't fun. But if all you're doing is trying to put some textured quads (two triangles) on the screen and you're not wrangling multiple framebuffers, there's not much to go wrong.

Re: Clip control on the Apple GPU

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenCL is not an OS level API. I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations. GCD isn't OS level either, it's just a library, but it is at least a new API.

> I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations. OpenCL was created and open sourced by Apple. >OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia. OpenCL 1.0 released with Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28, 2009. https://en.wikipedia.…

I mean, the other poster "guaranteed" it, so I don't know who to believe here.
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