Damn, I did exactly this already for the M3 and got it working. Was hoping to make a post about it but this kinda scoops it. Bravo!
Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
191–200 of 293 posts
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#192What would it take to run pytorch on the M4 GPU efficiently? Is there still a gap between what MPS offers and this driver (if properly hooked into Pytorch)?
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nintendo doesn't care. There's been proprietary Nintendo SDK code in libogc (open source library for making GameCube homebrew) for years. And more recently the various decompilation process have made recreations of linked code from the SDK that compile match byte for byte. In practice the legal risk of being sued into oblivion for this is not there. If anything there would be a DMCA takedown / cease and desist.
Right, but they are one of the biggest DMCA abusers. They killed many fan projects. They killed game renting in Japan as a concept. They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator). And they could change their mind at any time.
>They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator).
For the record Yuzu included code for circumventing Nintendo's DRM they had on game carts. It violated the DMCA.
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the most abstract and esoteric argument I’ve ever heard I think
The argument is not esoteric. An Apple employee working on a reverse engineered GPU driver might (intentionally or not) incorporate internal knowledge that they are contractually obligated to keep secret or write an implementation that is too close to proprietary code they had access to, to the point that it could be argued that it is a derived work. This sort of thing has always been a concern for projects that re-i…
Exactly! That’s why companies create a clone every time they hire someone, put a clone into vat, and upon person quitting, the person is disposed of and the clone is sent to his family to take upon his role, without leaking company’s internal knowledge.
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nvidia's kernel module is open source these days, it's the usermode stack that's still closed.
Even though the kernel module is open-source (sort of, development still happens behind closed doors), it's still an out-of-tree module, rather than being built into the kernel, which would give you as smooth an experience as with AMD or Intel, who's GPUs literally do just work on any distro with no fuss.
It’s never gonna be a smooth experience with Linux on Macs, because of installation, but also firmware upgrades etc. there’s always some manual steps involved and nothing will change unless Apple itself starts supporting Linux natively
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument is not esoteric. An Apple employee working on a reverse engineered GPU driver might (intentionally or not) incorporate internal knowledge that they are contractually obligated to keep secret or write an implementation that is too close to proprietary code they had access to, to the point that it could be argued that it is a derived work. This sort of thing has always been a concern for projects that re-i…
Exactly! That’s why companies create a clone every time they hire someone, put a clone into vat, and upon person quitting, the person is disposed of and the clone is sent to his family to take upon his role, without leaking company’s internal knowledge.
Damn, I might have accidentally clean room reimplemented Severance without ever seeing as much as trailer, expecting Ternus’ kill squad any minute.
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#197This is extremely impressive work; kudos. I was thinking about this with regard to Asahi's anti-LLM policy just last week - they're going to get completely outmoded by LLM-harnessed reverse engineering, if only for personal use and not upstreaming. I'm surprised you worked with Niklas on this. I'd have assumed you'd think he was competent, given he went to Binghamton and not Stanford.
Sounds like you’re right, just looking at the recent Omarchy announcements regarding heir work on Macs. It’s all LLM accelerated and they don’t seem to care.
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR: 1. We want to guarantee our work is not a "derivative work" of anything Apple wrote. 2. If we look at any Apple binaries, there's no way prove that our code didn't borrow from Apple. 3. Since we didn't look at any Apple binaries, then there's no way our work can be a derivative work-- we didn't even look at their stuff.
Wouldn't using OpenAI break the cleanroom?
Yeah I see developers constantly saying they RE stuff using LLM in a clean room way and it’s definitely an opinion, not a fact. Just look at the most recent post here: https://x.com/ewninjaofficial
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#199[deleted]
Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
#200Why this thread reads like it's from Reddit?