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An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

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Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#241

Post by samtheprogram »

exDM69 wrote: post #175
dtquad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This statement isn't true at all. There are tons of fixed function hardware units for graphics in GPUs in addition to compute cores: triangle rasterizers, texture units, raytracing units, blitters, copy engines, video codecs, etc. They interact with the shader/compute cores and it's getting more common that the shader core is driving the rasterizer etc than vice versa (mesh shaders and ray tracing for example). Calli…

How is verifying against a worse performing, open source GPU driver any sort of verification that proprietary drivers do not do special things you wouldn’t expect?

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#242

Post by flyingpenguin »

GeekyBear wrote: post #227
jillesvangurp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People booting linux on their macs to play games would really annoy Apple probably. You dont have to boot Linux to play PC games on Mac. Apple already provides the tools you need to build a Mac native equivalent to Proton. There are several options built using those tools, both paid {Crossover) and free/open source (Whisky). Whisky combines the same ooen source Wine project that Proton leverages with Apple's Rosett…

The problem here is that apple only provides Metal as the graphics driver. This solution instead creates a native Vulkan driver which has solutions to hardwarevulkan incompatibilities built in at the driver level.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#243

Post by ozgrakkurt »

adastra22 wrote: post #64

> frankly, I think ray tracing is a bit of a gimmick feature That's incredibly arrogant. The whole industry is adopting ray tracing, and it is a very desired feature people are upgrading video cards to get working on games they play.

It is marketing bs, it was not needed and is not needed imo, and many other people’s opinions. Expressing opinion can’t be arrogant imho

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#244

Post by GeekyBear »

flyingpenguin wrote: post #242
GeekyBear wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People booting linux on their macs to play games would really annoy Apple probably. You dont have to boot Linux to play PC games on Mac. Apple already provides the tools you need to build a Mac native equivalent to Proton. There are several options built using those tools, both paid {Crossover) and free/open source (Whisky). Whisky combines the same ooen source Wine project that Proton leverages with Apple's Rosett…

The problem here is that apple only provides Metal as the graphics driver. This solution instead creates a native Vulkan driver which has solutions to hardware vulkan incompatibilities built in at the driver level.

MacOS provides Metal as its native Graphics API.

Proton and Alyssa's solution use Vulkan on Linux as their native graphics API.

Regardless, you have to provide a translation layer so that Windows games written to call DirectX APis use the native graphics layer of the platform you are running on.

Unless you happen to be emulating a Windows game written to use Vulkan instead of DirectX, Vulkan really doesn't matter at all on the Mac.

If you do want to emulate one of the rare Vulkan based Windows games on a Mac, the MoltenVK translation layer handles that.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#245

Post by Twisell »

GeekyBear wrote: post #237
Twisell wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is barring Apple from supporting Vulkan natively on MacOS. This is essentially the closing statement of Alyssa Rosenzweig´s talk. With Apple knowledge of internal documents they are the best positioned to produce an even better low level implementation. At this point the main blockroad is the opinionated point that Metal porting is the only official supported way to go. If Valve pull up a witch-crafted way to…

> Metal porting is the only official supported way to go. Apple already provides its own native implementation of a DirectX to Metal emulation layer.

And yet I see more Game available for steamdeck than for apple Silicon... Maybe because porting as opposed to emulating requires action on developer side.

And this is especially true for existing game that "aren't worth porting" but are still fun to play. (Is there a Vulkan to Metal / OpenGL to Metal in Gaming toolkit? is it the NexStep?)

There is actually a sweet spot here for Valve that could benefit everyone:

  - Valve as a necessary third party

  - Gamers to access a wider catalog

  - Apple so they don't have to bother developing a porting process for old games

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#246

Post by TylerE »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #209
attendant3446 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience. Apple is incredibly difficult and expensive to repair. But I have been pleasantly surprised by the longevity and repairability of ThinkPads. I like those Apple M processors, but I know where I'm spending my money.

Agreed, hard to repair (which is a problem), but my experience is owning one for 8 years, and another for 4 years now (with hopes to keep it another 6), which never once needed a repair.

The only Mac hardware failure I’ve experienced in over 25 years of ownership (My first Mac was black and had a G3 in it and ran OS 8), I’ve experienced a grand total of one hardware failure, and that was 15+ years ago.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#247

Post by GeekyBear »

Twisell wrote: post #245
GeekyBear wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal porting is the only official supported way to go. Apple already provides its own native implementation of a DirectX to Metal emulation layer.

And yet I see more Game available for steamdeck than for apple Silicon... Maybe because porting as opposed to emulating requires action on developer side. And this is especially true for existing game that "aren't worth porting" but are still fun to play. (Is there a Vulkan to Metal / OpenGL to Metal in Gaming toolkit? is it the NexStep?) There is actually a sweet spot here for Valve that could benefit everyone: - Va…

> Maybe because porting as opposed to emulating requires action on developer side.

The Steam Deck is also just emulating native Windows APIs, but on Linux.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)

Game compatibility isn't 100% with either, and both have community maintained lists with compatibility information.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#248

Post by sroussey »

TylerE wrote: post #95
sroussey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How it handles memory and registers is quite different.

How much will this matter to (somewhat graphics demanding) end users? I'm somewhat eagerly awaiting swapping out my M1 Studio with the M4 Studio that is all but confirmed to be coming at some point next year... More GPU grunt would certainly make me happy. Even the M1 is a far more competent gaming machine than I expected but I came from an i9/3080 machine so, well, more is more, as long as they can keep it near sile…

The GPU speed, like the number of GPU cores, hasn’t moved a lot. Clock speed has moved up a bit.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#249

Post by ho_schi »

user_7832 wrote: post #160
ho_schi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ThinkPad X220 here. From late 2012 until late 2023 in service with Linux. It is still usable but finally replaced it by an X13 Gen3 AMD with Linux. The magnesium body is a bless and feels a lot better to the skin than aluminium. The HiDPI display is the biggest upgrade. The six row keyboard is sturdy but a downgrade from the seven row keyboard. I miss the notch to open the lid. It got worse with Gen4/5 which now have…

> The magnesium body is a bless and feels a lot better to the skin than aluminium. Just curious, how does it feel better? My framework apparently has an aluminium lid and a magnesium base, and the mg feels “smoother” than the slightly more textured al… however my iPad is apparently aluminium too and is smooth to the touch.

It is not about smoothness.

Actually the magnesium bottom feels like some high quality polymer/plastic. And it is leightweight. Therefore it doesn’t feel like metal and doesn’t transport heat/cold. Aluminum is a nice material for planes, cars or bikes but I avoid skin contact because it is uncomfortable.

I guess like often it depends on how the magnesium made. Lenovo also uses for other parts high quality plastics (keyboard of course and probably the palm rest).

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#250

Post by jahewson »

helsinki wrote: post #229

Alyssa's solution to the 4KB vs. 16KB page size discrepancy by running everything in a virtual machine feels like both a clever hack and a potential performance bottleneck. It makes me wonder about the long-term implications of such workarounds. Are we reaching a point where the complexity of bridging these gaps outweighs the benefits, especially when dealing with proprietary hardware designed to be a closed ecosyste…

> Should the community continue to invest significant resources into making closed systems more open, or should efforts be redirected toward promoting more open hardware standards?

False dichotomy. Do both!

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