Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 291 posts

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#141

Post by david-gpu »

dtquad wrote: post #39
gigatexal wrote: post #30

Is anyone else astonished at how much is missing in the hardware and how much is emulated?

The graphics pipeline in modern GPUs are mostly a thin low-level Vulkan/Metal-like layer on top of a massively parallel CUDA-like compute architecture. It's basically all emulated. One of the reasons GPU manufacturers are unwilling to open source their drivers is because a lot of their secret sauce actually happens in software in the drivers on top of the massively parallel CUDA-like compute architecture.

As a former insider, this is NOT remotely how I would describe reality.

I have signed NDAs and don't feel comfortable going into any detail, other than saying that there is a TON going on inside GPUs that is not "basically all emulated".

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#142

Post by Cthulhu_ »

whitehexagon wrote: post #128

What I really respect is the dedication to completing support for the M1/M2. Too many projects get dropped the moment the next shiny ray-traced toy comes along. I know this type of work can be challenging to say the least. My own dabble with Zig and Pinephone hardware drivers reminded me of some of the pain of poorly documented hardware, but what a reward when it works. My own M1 was only purchased because of this pr…

One thing I noticed in the M4 macbook announcement comments was how many people were happy with their M1 laptop, and second, how many people kept their Macbooks for nearly a decade; these devices are built to last, and I applaud long-term support from Apple itself and the Linux community.

Second, since it's open source, Apple themselves are probably paying attention; I didn't read the whole thing because it's going over my head, but she discussed missing features in the chip that are being worked around.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#144

Post by patates »

whitehexagon wrote: post #128

What I really respect is the dedication to completing support for the M1/M2. Too many projects get dropped the moment the next shiny ray-traced toy comes along. I know this type of work can be challenging to say the least. My own dabble with Zig and Pinephone hardware drivers reminded me of some of the pain of poorly documented hardware, but what a reward when it works. My own M1 was only purchased because of this pr…

> what a reward when it works

as someone who's been coding for more than 20 years, the happiest and the most depressed moments in my career both came during a hardware project I participated only for 4 months.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#148

Post by [deleted] »

Nullabillity wrote: post #122
adastra22 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This guy gets it. Path tracing is the gold standard for computer graphics. It is a physically based rendering model that is based on how lighting actually works. There are degrees of path tracing of varying quality, but there is nothing else that is better from a visual quality and accuracy standpoint. Your modern AAA title does a massive amount of impressive hacks to get rasterization into the uncanny val…

This is all built on the, frankly, nonsensical assumption that photorealism is the , let alone a , primary goal.

[deleted]

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#150

Post by jillesvangurp »

kristianp wrote: post #127

I was going going to say she should work for Valve to help get Steam working on Linux on Macs, but it seems she already does? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyssa_Rosenzweig#Career

Nice; that raises some interesting questions as to what Valve is planning here. Steam/Proton on macs would make a lot of sense for them hard as it may be. People booting linux on their macs to play games would really annoy Apple probably.
Post reply on HN