Live data from Hacker News

Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

rosenzweig.io

191–200 of 372 posts

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#191
post #134

Something crashes, it's _never_ a compiler bug ... April 16 Oh, it actually is a compiler bug! Can confidently say I've never experienced one in my career, but at some level of abstraction I guess it's less rare to find them.

It's never a compiler bug, and it's definitely never a CPU bug. Unless you're a low level kernel developer, then it's both! (Jokes aside, it's still much, much more often not than it is, but it definitely does happen.)

> Unless you're a low level kernel developer, then it's both!

Or you're working in cryptography code and have to fight against compilers optimizing away sensitive stuff [1] - or adding junk back in [2].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/security-flaws-caused-compile...

[2] https://pqshield.com/pqshield-plugs-timing-leaks-in-kyber-ml...

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#192
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is something I was just thinking about a few moments ago. I've haven't watched any of Hector latest stuff if he is still streaming. But between Hector, Alyssa, and Asahi Lina, they all 3 are pretty motivated and pretty excited to share. Which is great and something I wish we had more of. It helps to demystify these systems some. For many, GPUs and graphics APIs are just black boxes of magic and it can be hard to…

More like just Hector and Alyssa. Asahi Lina isn't a real person, but more of a mascot.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple already shipped Metal version 1 a full year before Vulkan was even an idea. That doesn't stop them from implementing two APIs at once, like every single GPU hardware vendor in existence. But given their avoidance of OpenGL and OpenCL, we should have always assumed Apple's goal was to usurp Open interfaces and replace them with only proprietary options. What else could they intend to signal? > Windows and Xbox…

Apple created OpenCL. It was nvidia who made everyone else avoid it.

What does that prove, though? Apple gave up. Ironically, now Nvidia is one of the only remaining companies that supports OpenCL anymore.

Apple is experiencing firsthand what the lack of a CUDA analog does to a company. Whether or not they care is up to them, but clearly the laser-focus on high-performance GPU compute is not doing Apple Silicon any favors in the server space or in the desktop.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan probably wouldn't help macOS gaming from a users' point of view, but it sure would be nice for us engine developers. There aren't many Vulkan games , but the big 3 non-in-house game engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot) are all committed to supporting Vulkan in addition to Metal, so we (collectively, the engine dev community) currently have to support both. Dropping Metal would reduce the amount of engineer time spen…

Interesting point of view that could also be the other way around, Vulkan support being a hidden tax for the love of open source and free software rather than something really useful the market needed on top of others APIs / GPU architectures / platforms, pushed by a subset / minority of developers more ideological than practical grounded developers who accept that competition of private standards will bring out the…

Coverage. Metal only covers Apple. Vulkan covers so much more.

But money talks and game engines want a slice of that sweet apple pie.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan probably wouldn't help macOS gaming from a users' point of view, but it sure would be nice for us engine developers. There aren't many Vulkan games , but the big 3 non-in-house game engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot) are all committed to supporting Vulkan in addition to Metal, so we (collectively, the engine dev community) currently have to support both. Dropping Metal would reduce the amount of engineer time spen…

Interesting point of view that could also be the other way around, Vulkan support being a hidden tax for the love of open source and free software rather than something really useful the market needed on top of others APIs / GPU architectures / platforms, pushed by a subset / minority of developers more ideological than practical grounded developers who accept that competition of private standards will bring out the…

It feels unlikely. Much smaller companies (Broadcom, Qualcomm) have no trouble writing compliant Vulkan drivers (let alone singular people), so I find it hard to give Apple the pass here. Assuming good faith on their part, Vulkan should be available; or at least some kind of cross-platform API target. Otherwise people are just going to ignore Mac and keep focusing on DirectX, like the status quo.

Vulkan is everyone's ticket out of that mess. Not only does it provide Apple an industry-standard API for third-parties to develop on, it flips the DirectX problem on it's head. Because you support Vulkan 1.3 you get DXVK support alongside DX9, DX11 and DX12 support. Now it doesn't matter what third parties do, because you win every time; Steam Deck politics.

The status-quo is simply detracting from the value of using MacOS; the only feasible explanation is that Apple is hoping to somehow force developers into using Metal natively. Outside Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, I just don't see it happening.

> The Apple Metal platform surely is customized to the needs of Apple

That clearly doesn't stop anyone from writing Vulkan drivers for the hardware, though. OP appears to be blatant evidence of this.

For example; CUDA is well-customized to Nvidia's specific hardware, but their hardware also supports Vulkan drivers. Same goes for Intel with oneAPI and AMD's ROCm; all of them still support Vulkan. Apple is quite literally one of the only mainstream manufacturers that does not support it.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#197
post #85
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a tangential rant, so I apologize. But I recently tried to update Death Stranding, the flagship AAA game that Apple landed on macOS and in the App Store. The game itself is 77.5 GB; it had required a little over 150 GB to install. I shrugged that off at the time; they haven't figured out how to decompress on the fly, whatever. I had about 50GB free on my (1 TB M1 Max) machine at the time of the updat…

> I had about 50GB free on my (1 TB M1 Max) machine at the time of the update, and the App Store told me I didn't have enough free space to update. I balked and looked at the update description, which was just "Various minor bug fixes." The update size was...75 GB. They expect me to re-download the entire game for various minor bug fixes. It is an unfortunate truth that one must now bear in mind, that games are for a…

[dead]

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#198
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense to me. Apple does nothing to prevent AAA games on the App Store also being released on Steam. I think it’s more likely that the GPTK license is to encourage developers to make high quality native ports rather than devs checking a box to make their game available on Mac.

For whatever reason Steam just doesn't seem very popular with Mac users. In the latest Hardware survey Mac users were outnumbered by Linux users by 50%. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

[dead]

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple created OpenCL. It was nvidia who made everyone else avoid it.

What does that prove, though? Apple gave up. Ironically, now Nvidia is one of the only remaining companies that supports OpenCL anymore. Apple is experiencing firsthand what the lack of a CUDA analog does to a company. Whether or not they care is up to them, but clearly the laser-focus on high-performance GPU compute is not doing Apple Silicon any favors in the server space or in the desktop.

It proves that the idea that Apple avoided OpenCL is ludicrous.

Re: Vulkan1.3 on the M1 in one month

#200
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how feasible a Metal compatibility library wrapped around Vulkan would be? Sort of an inverse of the MoltenVK project? I don't see any reason why that would be infeasible other than "no one really wants this but me". > Also, what is the best resource for learning Metal if all you know is some OpenGL 1.x from the old “Lego” book? To be clear, I am not a graphics person, I'm a dude who dicks around with grap…

Thanks! I always wanted to learn Metal, but it doesn’t seem like there are many resources on it other than Apple’s website.

I also think FNA is pretty cool as well. It’s kind of “mid level” instead of low level, more or less like a light Direct3D. I think MonoGame is supposed to be comparable but I haven’t used it.
Post reply on HN