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The first conformant M1 GPU driver

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Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#391

Post by Yajirobe »

varispeed wrote: post #258
htk wrote: 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.

Employment is a poor proposition. Typically employees make poor money in comparison to what kind of profit they generate, that especially applies to IT. Anyone with a talent, should rather seek to incorporate and sell their services at fair price. Unfortunately in some countries, big corporations managed to lobby governments to put a stop to that.

> Typically employees make poor money in comparison to what kind of profit they generate

I think it’s the opposite - developers are overvalued.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#392

Post by nicce »

solardev wrote: post #154
jwmcq wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly there has not been a rush to go back and update multiple decades' worth of games to use newer rendering APIs.

I was more hoping this would open up another pathway (in addition to Crossover 23 and GPTK) for Apple Silicon computers to be able to play modern games. Doesn't sound like that's the case.

I have found GeForce Now perfect for the Apple’s new devices. Since the client is native code, you don’t even notice that game is running in cloud. And And you can play 7 hours in battery the best graphic games out there, with 1000nit display…

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#393

Post by fnordpiglet »

nicce wrote: post #387
fnordpiglet wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope she avoids working for someone else. Why does she need to have her inspiration crushed by the pettiness of corporate life?

Usually the reason is always the same: money. That is why people work in corporates.

Actually I think it’s more being unsure of what else to do in life and for want of a structure, and money is one of those things people are unsure of. However looking at her work to date, she can find money on her own terms. She seems to work well on her own terms in her own structure. The thing that could hurt her more than anything is working under someone else’s structure and terms.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#394

Post by overgard »

softfalcon wrote: post #197

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…

Apple is definitely not going back to OpenGL. I can't say I'm particularly sad, OpenGL is very long in the tooth and writing a good driver for it seems like a nightmare, considering how hard it is to even write good performant application OpenGL code. I wish they had thrown in behind Vulkan instead of creating Metal, but it seems like outside of linux vulkan is a second class citizen everywhere (although it's a pretty good second class citizen to target).

In terms of supporting games or steam and such, I think the reality is that a large segment of games now use engines that handle the API stuff for you, and if you do have the resources/time/inclination to write directly to the API, you're probably ok with MoltenVK as long as you're not doing anything too cutting edge.

Seriously though, while I've written OpenGL most of my life to be cross platform and support the most I can, it's an absolutely TERRIBLE api. Global state everywhere, tons of functions you can-but-shouldn't-use, all sorts of traps everywhere, monsterous header files for extensions, incredibly hard to debug. Vulkan is verbose but in a lot of ways it's actually easier, even if it's advertised as being the more hardcore way to do things.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#395

Post by TillE »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #319
softfalcon wrote: post #197

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…

> 1. Apple conforms to the existing standards of OpenGL and Vulkan we see gaining steam for many film and game production pipelines. Read what gamedevs have to say about this, Metal is more appreciated than Vulkan > 2. Apple tries to throw its weight around and force devs to support their Metal standards even more, ultimately hoping to force the world onto Metal + macOS. Apple was part of the Vulkan working group, kn…

Do you mean engine developers who actually use the Metal API, or game developers writing shader code? I know game developers prefer HLSL (Direct3D) over GLSL, but I dunno what people think about MSL.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#396

Post by kouteiheika »

jmull wrote: post #156
bsaul wrote: post #12

"Of course, Asahi Lina and I are two individuals with minimal funding. It’s a little awkward that we beat the big corporation…" Love the euphemism. 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 (still waiting for the facetime standard, or any kind of cross-platform technology created in the…

I just don't see how it's incumbent on Apple to implement a standard only because it exists. It takes significant resources and impacts release schedules to, say, support an on-going vulkan implementation... I think there would need to be a business argument for it. Avoiding "shame" probably doesn't cut it. It just strikes me as strange when people expect Apple to spend money and focus on their own personal prioritie…

> It takes significant resources and impacts release schedules to, say, support an on-going vulkan implementation...

Let's see... on one hand we have two devs who made it happen (for OpenGL; with Vulkan coming in the future), with essentially no funding, purely in their spare time and without any documentation, just by reverse engineering the hardware.

On the other hand we have a trillion dollar corporation, with 100 billion dollars in profit last year, with over 150k employees, with full documentation for the hardware.

Yep, it checks out. Apple's definitely resource strapped and can't afford to do it. No way they can compete with two spare-time hobbyist. Would be too expensive.

I'm sometimes really amazed how Apple-biased a big portion of HN is. People here can always find some sort of excuse to justify whatever shitty new thing Apple is doing (or why it isn't doing something), no matter how much mental gymnastics it requires.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#397

Post by hooch »

xp84 wrote: post #371
JohnBooty wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then as they clawed their way back from the precipice, they started "adding value" again. I don't know if I can agree. On the software side, MacOS supports all those things. On the hardware side, it's still (edit: almost) nothing but industry-standard ports.

iChat stored every conversation (if you enabled history) in HTML files the user could find in their Documents folder and read. Messages history is stored in an undocumented SQLite database that you’re not meant to touch. I’m not saying they’re completely proprietary in every way, but you can see the progression from wide open to “keep your hands off.” For another example, Apple Notes was actually just mail messages s…

IMAP notes still works.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#398

Post by mattl »

gumby wrote: post #211
softfalcon wrote: post #197

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 ba…

NeXT had RTF support. It was used everywhere including NeXTmail

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#399

Post by nicce »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #393
nicce wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the reason is always the same: money. That is why people work in corporates.

Actually I think it’s more being unsure of what else to do in life and for want of a structure, and money is one of those things people are unsure of. However looking at her work to date, she can find money on her own terms. She seems to work well on her own terms in her own structure. The thing that could hurt her more than anything is working under someone else’s structure and terms.

I found that people more often start PhD if they don’t know what to do. But of course depends on quite many things.

I agree, her kind of people will find the money and better work without corprate bureocracy.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#400

Post by kbenson »

scarface_74 wrote: post #369
kbenson wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they used them doesn't mean they like using them, just that they don't have the sway to move people to something of their own. FireWire was developed by Apple and some other companies, as a competitor to USB, and lost out to USB. Apple had their own video container and codec formats in quicktime, and those also lost out to others. They definitely prefer to roll their own, they just don't always succeed i…

> FireWire was developed by Apple and some other companies, as a competitor to USB, and lost out to USB. Apple was part of the patent pool for FireWire and is also part of the patent pool for USB C and was early to be onboard with Thunderbolt along with Intel. Apple went all in on USB with the iMac in 1997 well before PCs were completely onboard. > Apple had their own video container and codev formats in quicktime, a…

> Apple was part of the patent pool for FireWire

Apple is listed first as the designer, then second the IEEE1394 working group. Indeed, there's some indication that Apple's development started in the 80's and it wasn't until later it was presented as a standard.[1] Funnily enough, they wanted it to replace SCSI, another technology you noted as a counter to Apple not liking standards they don't control.

> is also part of the patent pool for USB C

Being part of a patent pool doesn't really mean anything to me, given how companies use patents strategically and trade them. Do you have details on what patents may be shared? (I ask because I looked and it wasn't obvious from some light googling on my part).

> and was early to be onboard with Thunderbolt along with Intel.

They weren't early to onboard, they developed it with Intel (even if Intel held most of the patents and may have done the lion's share of the work, I'm not sure on that point).[2]

> Apple went all in on USB with the iMac in 1997 well before PCs were completely onboard.

Being able to control the hardware completely allows they to make shifts like that, because there was no one "PC" to be completely onboard. That said, they make moves away from it where they could for protocols they had some level of control and or steering of (FireWire, Thunderbolt, etc).

> Apple’s QuickTime container is part of the standard

Apple's QTFF was donated to be the container for MP4, but for a decade or more prior to that it was proprietary (but may have been open to implementation by third parties, I'm not sure). The main problem was that Apple licensed and defaulted to using Sorenson video codecs in their Quicktime framework and shipped it along with their video players, locking down the playing of the format to people willing to purchase the Sorenson codec individually or to those that used their player.

I admit this one is less about using a standard of their own and more just an early example of the platform control and lock-in they're known for now.

> And Apple is in the patent pool for H.264

Again, being in a patent pool for a large company doesn't by itself signal anything to me, given how strategically large orgs use patents. I would need some more info to view this one way or another.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

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