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The first conformant M1 GPU driver

rosenzweig.io

211–220 of 699 posts

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#211

I wonder if support for OpenGL, Vulkan, etc will improve now that Apple is partnering with nVidia, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, etc around the OpenUSD rendering/animation/CAD/3D-scene format? Considering the whole schtick of OpenUSD is "one file format that renders consistently everywhere" (paraphrasing), I would be surprised if Apple doesn't use it as a means to cement more 3D software vendors into macOS land. It's r…

> In my experience, Apple doesn't like any standards it doesn't control with an iron fist

I would add some nuance to this statement: "Apple likes open standards when it is weak."

The iMac and early OS X went big on open standards, and Jobs made a point of pointing this out: USB for the iMac, JPEG, MPG, mp3, Postscript etc for OSX. IP/TCP built in. They even paid the danegeld for .rtf.

Then as they clawed their way back from the precipice, they started "adding value" again.

The iphone was an HTML device, loudly repudiating the proprietary (and terrible) Flash much less the crappy, mostly stillborn "mobile HTML" attempts.

You still get H.264, matter/threads, and other standards they don't control, where they don't have market power.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This puts Apple to shame, plain and simple. They obviously don't care about standards, or compliance, because they like people to be walled in their own little private garden Is everyone missing the part where Apple left the door open for other operating systems and development thereof when it would have been relatively trivial for them to lock the laptops down. They literally made their own silicon and built an en…

> It's really disappointing to see everyone bashing Apple when it's clear to anyone paying attention that they made a conscious decision to leave the door open for 3rd party development. Maybe I'm just a jaded grey-beard but I suspect that this is more of a "placate the anti-trust regulators" play and not a genuine olive branch offering. Apple gets to say "see, look! Not only are we not locking people out - there's a…

This is one moment where I really hate what happened to Twitter, since I feel like I recall a tweet from Marcan ages ago pointing out that Apple has fixed some things regarding 3rd party OS support.

That is to say, unless I am truly off my rocker and remembering a fever dream: it's not just a "placate the anti-trust regulators" play.

I'm pretty sure I've also seen it mentioned on HN itself that Linux is still used within Apple for certain aspects of hardware development, so Apple themselves need it to work to a certain degree.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use to be 100% linux person. I've gone through many thinkpads. M1 Air is so far beyond them it's not even close. Battery life is (not exaggerating) 5x or more in my experience. It's honest to god, much faster. Completely silent and cool. (one of my thinkpads almost burned me it got so hot, and the fans get so loud) I've never had a single crash, random restart, failure to sleep, failure to charge, driver problem, tou…

>driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads. Those are Linux driver issues, not HW issues.

They are very likely hardware issues that the Linux driver is simply not working around rather than being actually wrong.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#214
post #42

For clarity, this isn't the first conformant linux drivers. Apple themselves are not conformant to OpenGL® ES 3.1. So this is literally the first conformant OpenGL ES 3.1 drivers for M-Series, for any operating system (Apple or Non-Apple). Hence why the call to action to donate to the team. https://asahilinux.org/support/

The Github link there goes to marcan, who leads Asahi, but I want to primarily support this driver development. Is that an option? If so, where do I do that? If not, I'll just use this later today.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a MacBook Pro in 2013 and my mom bought a Dell XPS at around the same time. Her laptop died, she got a Lenovo Yoga. That one died within a year and was replaced for free. The new one died after two years. When the M1 Air came out I gave her the old MacBook Pro, which she still uses every day, going strong (aside from battery life, but it's mostly plugged in). It has essentially outlived 4 Windows laptops. I…

The M1 won't, the SSD will wear out before that and with no way to swap, it will be landfill as well.

Do the M1s have especially short write lifetimes? I have a Toshiba from 2010 or so and the SSD is still fine even if the trackpad and speaker ports died years ago.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who do more will, by definition, have more experience than those who do less. The engineers who spend their time reading and working on problems because they want to, creating larger volumes of work than those who only work an 8-to-5 job will generally always have a larger breadth and depth of experience. Saying the inverse is true is highly unlikely over large populations of individuals across any field, not…

You continue to equate volume and time with quality of work. But still... > People who do more will, by definition, have more experience than those who do less. Disagree. The quality of work, and the intensity is as important as the length of work. 100hr of focused work is better than 1000hr of distracted, unfocused work. It also depends on the type of work, i would argue that someone who does 50hr of Haskell and 50h…

Supposedly there is good data to suggest that people who work 10% longer make 40% more money. Now, that's not necessarily causal or anything, but it doesn't have to be. From a hiring perspective, it just has to be true. Unless you suspect that a candidate has scammed his previous employers, it is rational to prefer candidates who, based on their hours worked, are more likely to be effective at making money. Making money is generally the business of business.

"The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average person working 45 hours per week earns 44% more pay—that is, 44% more pay for 13% more work"

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#217

I really wish nerds would stop supporting Apple hardware and software. It is so closed and everything is a giant pain. Its one thing for the average non-techie that does not want to do anything advanced and just wants to swallow the blue pill. But for an actual techie to support a system that is the antithesis of general purpose compute...Can you even be considered a true techie anymore? I just don't get it.

A lot of dev companies force their employees to use bacbooks in part as a result of their locked down practices and the only way to actually compile and test for "everything", because of how much easier it is to cross compile to other platforms and markets.

For that reason, I've personally had to use a M2 for a week now, and I find the experience unpleasant. The OS feels old and cumbersome. I had flashback to a time long ago when I needed to install custom apps in Windows for some basic functionality that's been built in gnome. Things like "alt + tab" actually bringing an app to the foreground, instead of prioritizing the minimized state. Why this deliberate action would have seemingly no effect is correct, I'm sure will be defended.

Global shortcut to start up a terminal? Install a third party utility is probably the easiest. Want to place windows on the screen? Install a third party utility. Better screenshot functionality? Install a third party app. Change the default shell to a custom one? First you got to figure out how to access the root system through finder to actually find the executable.

It goes on and on. And the performance is much worse than what I've become used to. The only thing it actually has going for it, which I believe is great, is battery life. But, that's it.

I'm just glad I was able to disable the app validation check, because it had literally prevented me from installing a lot of third party software, and the suggested workarounds had no effect. Just the fact of phoning home every time run an executable makes me nauseous.

I wonder how often the homebrew team get offers to add malware, because the checks there seem woefully insufficient.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#218

I wonder if support for OpenGL, Vulkan, etc will improve now that Apple is partnering with nVidia, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, etc around the OpenUSD rendering/animation/CAD/3D-scene format? Considering the whole schtick of OpenUSD is "one file format that renders consistently everywhere" (paraphrasing), I would be surprised if Apple doesn't use it as a means to cement more 3D software vendors into macOS land. It's r…

OpenUSD is a way of bundling and specifying the data to be rendered. It doesn't relate to which API the app uses to accelerate rendering. Adobe, Autodesk, Blender, and most others support different backends per operating system including Metal on macOS already.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in my opinion very wrong, you will end up just selecting for a sub population which might or might have the qualities you are looking for. You seem to be confusing volume of work and passion for skill. Some of the best engineers i know will are very diligent about work life balance (i guess you call that clock in/sign out), do not have publicly visible git hub because in their spare time they are either with…

People who do more will, by definition, have more experience than those who do less. The engineers who spend their time reading and working on problems because they want to, creating larger volumes of work than those who only work an 8-to-5 job will generally always have a larger breadth and depth of experience. Saying the inverse is true is highly unlikely over large populations of individuals across any field, not…

>> People who do more will, by definition, have more experience than those who do less. The engineers who spend their time reading and working on problems because they want to, creating larger volumes of work than those who only work an 8-to-5 job will generally always have a larger breadth and depth of experience.

Nope. Some people spend a lot of time doing because they need more time to get it right. Hopefully they do improve over time.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#220
post #19

Asahi and Alyssa are the titans of reverse engineering. Their work is pretty unbelievable. I would bet Apple is planning to hire them, or has tried already and they refused.

I bet Apple already tried and they refused due to NDA and non compete clauses, that or HR didn't validate their profile.

You also need soft skills to work in a company. There are lots of people in the open source world who are technically brilliant arseholes.

Not saying that's the case here; just that "amazing programming" doesn't necessarily mean "Apple wants to employ them".

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