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Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

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Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#91
post #71
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't misinterpret this as gate keeping, but Vulkan is designed by and for professionals (not hobbyists). It is certainly not a rapid prototyping tool. Vulkan and OpenGL aren't comparable because Vulkan isn't merely a graphics API, but rather it's a low-level GPU API. For example you can use Vulkan in place of CUDA for running highly parallelized computations on the GPU (no graphics implied).

Yeah, I know, that's why I mentioned it being a target. I realize it's meant to be used for extremely low-level stuff. Which is fine, I don't get annoyed at x86_64 assembly being difficult to write. As I said, the thing that bothers me is when people act like Vulkan is a replacement for OpenGL (presumably because they've never actually written either and they just saw some YouTube demos), and it really isn't, or at l…

> I would also like to point out that CUDA and rocM are also considerably easier to write than the Vulkan equivalents

I agree that Vulkan has more boilerplate, but I think that's because Vulkan is an open standard and makes fewer assumptions which means the API has more ceremony. For example Vulkan might be implemented for custom embedded hardware; its design helps give the manufacturer more leeway. CUDA and ROCm were designed by Nvidia and AMD for their own hardware and so they can bake in low-level assumptions which means a more streamlined API.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#92
post #87
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really just drives home how big of a mistake it was ignoring Vulkan for the past decade on Apple's behalf, but lord knows they won't admit that until it's too late. They'll never admit it. They only caved on USB-C because they were legally required to. They won't cave on this, or NVidia support, or putting the charge port on the side of the mouse and not the belly, etc.

Nobody required USB-C charging for laptops and iPads. It would have happened on iPhones eventually too.

They were the (one of the) first ones to usb-c on laptops. I don’t think they were ever planning to do usb-c on the iPhone, they had no reason to be this late.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#93
post #91
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I know, that's why I mentioned it being a target. I realize it's meant to be used for extremely low-level stuff. Which is fine, I don't get annoyed at x86_64 assembly being difficult to write. As I said, the thing that bothers me is when people act like Vulkan is a replacement for OpenGL (presumably because they've never actually written either and they just saw some YouTube demos), and it really isn't, or at l…

> I would also like to point out that CUDA and rocM are also considerably easier to write than the Vulkan equivalents I agree that Vulkan has more boilerplate, but I think that's because Vulkan is an open standard and makes fewer assumptions which means the API has more ceremony. For example Vulkan might be implemented for custom embedded hardware; its design helps give the manufacturer more leeway. CUDA and ROCm wer…

Well ROCm is more or less designed to be portable between both; that's not strictly true but it's fairly similar to CUDA so I don't know how much of that boilerplate is reduced by the fact that it's AMD specific. Your point is fair though; Vulkan kind of runs on almost-literally everything made in the last nine years or so, so it can assume basically zero about any kind of underlying OS stuff.

Still, Vulkan has convinced me that I have no desire to work that low-level of GPU programming, as I had zero fun playing with it. I guess I like having one layer up of abstraction; I'm happy enough to write CUDA, and I'm happy enough to write anything higher level than that.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#94

Hacker News regularly makes me feel very stupid, and none more so than blog posts by Alyssa Rosenzweig. I couldn't even write an engine that used Vulkan in six months, nor a software rasteriser; meanwhile, Alyssa wrote an entire compliant driver on a non-native operating system running on locked-down hardware in one month flat. What am I doing with my life? EDIT: I point this out because I'd eventually like to write…

You're making wrong comparisons is what you're doing. If you had already written N game engines, could you write a new one in a month? Yes, right? Alyssa didn't spring from the head of Zeus fully formed; she has been developing GPU drivers for years. Pick something you want to work on and work on it for years.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#95

Hacker News regularly makes me feel very stupid, and none more so than blog posts by Alyssa Rosenzweig. I couldn't even write an engine that used Vulkan in six months, nor a software rasteriser; meanwhile, Alyssa wrote an entire compliant driver on a non-native operating system running on locked-down hardware in one month flat. What am I doing with my life? EDIT: I point this out because I'd eventually like to write…

You're living it the best you can with what you have. As the other commenter stated, you are making unfair comparisons. Focus on comparing your tomorrow self with your today self. As long as that comparison trends in the right direction, you're doing well.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#96

Hacker News regularly makes me feel very stupid, and none more so than blog posts by Alyssa Rosenzweig. I couldn't even write an engine that used Vulkan in six months, nor a software rasteriser; meanwhile, Alyssa wrote an entire compliant driver on a non-native operating system running on locked-down hardware in one month flat. What am I doing with my life? EDIT: I point this out because I'd eventually like to write…

> What am I doing with my life?

Not working on GPU drivers for third-party hardware?

These blog posts are fun, but they're in the same genre as porting game boy emulators.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#97
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertions aren’t backed by history though. Prior to metal and Vulkan, many games used Cider to target Mac despite having the same APi (at that point, an up to date OpenGL). And many of the current game devs do have Metal versions of their engines that they target towards iOS, yet don’t have a macOS version. The fact of the matter is that it comes down to market share. Macs have historically not had a large user…

> The argument that Vulkan would have solved this but it in fact did! You can play 90% of games on linux precisely because of Vulkan. Just boot Steam Deck or whatever and play. There is no way it would work out without Vulkan

And I address Proton specifically in my comment and also address why it’s not an indicator of increased gaming support on Mac.

I truly feel half of the replies here are glossing over the things I’ve already covered and perhaps are people who haven’t actually tried the equivalent Mac solutions and seen where the resultant deficiencies lie or the delta between platforms that proton would also have to bridge further.

Vulkan isn’t the magical silver bullet people think it is.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#98
post #94

Hacker News regularly makes me feel very stupid, and none more so than blog posts by Alyssa Rosenzweig. I couldn't even write an engine that used Vulkan in six months, nor a software rasteriser; meanwhile, Alyssa wrote an entire compliant driver on a non-native operating system running on locked-down hardware in one month flat. What am I doing with my life? EDIT: I point this out because I'd eventually like to write…

You're making wrong comparisons is what you're doing. If you had already written N game engines , could you write a new one in a month? Yes, right? Alyssa didn't spring from the head of Zeus fully formed; she has been developing GPU drivers for years. Pick something you want to work on and work on it for years.

Yes, definitely want to back this up. Alyssa is definitely a really skilled and competent engineer. But she also has years of domain knowledge she has built up. That isn't to knock down her skill, but more of, don't let it demotivate it you because it too also took Alyssa time to get where she is.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#99
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making wrong comparisons is what you're doing. If you had already written N game engines , could you write a new one in a month? Yes, right? Alyssa didn't spring from the head of Zeus fully formed; she has been developing GPU drivers for years. Pick something you want to work on and work on it for years.

Yes, definitely want to back this up. Alyssa is definitely a really skilled and competent engineer. But she also has years of domain knowledge she has built up. That isn't to knock down her skill, but more of, don't let it demotivate it you because it too also took Alyssa time to get where she is.

She is also great at communicating her advancements, which is a greatly useful skill to cultivate.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's wet dream is to have AAA games land in the Apple App Store This is why their efforts are largely doomed. I'd love to play more AAA games on my Macbook, but too many of them require a separate purchase from the App Store to make that happen, rather than just putting the Mac versions on Steam alongside the Windows version. If you're going to make me choose between playing a game on my laptop and playing it on…

What do we do as Apple users stuck in this ecosystem whose main goal is to extract more money from our pockets? I hate Windows with all my gut but at least I had a sense of freedom about the software I wanted to install on Windows, including games. On Mac, I'm constantly reminded that beyond this facade of user-friendly UI and nice visuals, there's a greedy company whose market cap is $3T but doesn't give a flying f*…

> What do we do as Apple users stuck in this ecosystem whose main goal is to extract more money from our pockets?

Leave ... the ... ecosystem.

This is the whole point of things like Asahi Linux. Take advantage of the hardware and escape from the software.

If all the developers who slave over Apple devices spent 10% of their time improving the experience on something else, 24 months later Apple wouldn't have a market.

I left. I got tired of fighting bugs in macOS given that Apple clearly no longer gives a damn about macOS.

I just bought my second Lenovo Carbon X1 after leaving Land-Of-The-Fruit. This one is about $1700 + a Saumsung 4TB SSD. Note: I can actually upgrade the SSD. It has 32GB of RAM for half the price of anything equivalent in macOS. The OLED display is right about the equivalent macOS resolution, and it's a matte display. It has a useful set of ports--a goddamn HDMI port as well as 2 USB-C and 2 USB-A ports.

And Lenovo's external dock actually freakin' works.

Yeah, it probably doesn't get the performance or battery life as an M3. Given that I didn't notice on my previous Lenovo vs an M1/M2, I'm not likely to notice this time either.

And, as a "bonus", I can run an actual Windows install if I absolutely must.

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