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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

rosenzweig.io

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Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#31

Post by shmerl »

marcan_42 wrote: post #30
shmerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an advantage to sabotage the adoption of common API like Vulkan. It holds the progress back and I totally blame Apple for pointless NIH and lack of collaboration here. Apple are doing it out of rather sickening lock-in culture in the company and Metal is far from the only example like that.

They aren't "sabotaging" anything, they are making a perfectly normal design trade-off to implement some features in shaders instead of as fixed-function hardware. By your definition, every modern GPU built in the last decade is "sabotaging" OpenGL 1.x support, because fixed-function vertex and pixel processing hasn't been a thing in that long and it's all done in shaders now, even if you use the legacy APIs. Alyssa…

I'll agree with you when they'll support Vulkan properly. Until then I see them as a hostile entity to common GPU APIs adoption.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#32

Post by Apocryphon »

macintux wrote: post #24
Apocryphon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has every right to do that as they control their stack. And people who favor FOSS projects have every right to criticize Apple for exercising their control in a way that adversely impacts FOSS.

Sure, but comments like this attribute hostility instead of simple practicality. > ...pointless NIH and lack of collaboration here. > Apple are doing it out of rather sickening lock-in culture in the company and Metal is far from the only example like that.

On the flip side, comments like

> no benefit to them in doing it the way that you want them to.

portray Apple almost as a helpless besieged small business that should be shielded from critique of its decisions. Whereas they are an industry titan, and people should criticize them as they see fit, even if others don't find merit in the criticisms.

> Whether you like it or not is immaterial

is a completely true, and utterly banal statement, as it can be applied to any opinion made in conversation. No one here has any power over Apple, but we do have the power to free discussion, do we not?

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#33

Post by cromwellian »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #18
shmerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an advantage to sabotage the adoption of common API like Vulkan. It holds the progress back and I totally blame Apple for pointless NIH and lack of collaboration here. Apple are doing it out of rather sickening lock-in culture in the company and Metal is far from the only example like that.

Apple are doing it because there’s no benefit to them in doing it the way that you want them to. Apple Pay the piper, and Apple call the tune. Whether you like it or not is immaterial.

There is a benefit to them, but they're myopic about it. The fact that we had OpenGL and DirectX as a standard meant that a vibrant 3d accelerator market opened up, they made immense advancements since the late 90s. Apple benefitted tremendously from being able to just pick up 2 decades of R&D into GPUs that existed because consumers had a competitive choice. If software had been locked into a single GPU, say a 3dfx Voodoo1, and all software was targeted at a proprietary API and design, how much advancement would have been lost?

Apple didn't even design their own GPU, the IP behind it is largely PowerVR, again, arising from a company trying to compete against ATI, NVidia, 3dfx, Matrox, etc who were running in a bandwidth wall, by taking a big risk with a tile based deferred renderer.

Now look at what is being competed on now? Ray intersection hardware. This is happening because of Raytracing extensions to DirectX and OpenGL. Otherwise you end up with a game console, and while game consoles can leverage their HW maximally, they don't produce necessarily top end HW innovation and performance.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#34

Post by marcan_42 »

shmerl wrote: post #31
marcan_42 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't "sabotaging" anything, they are making a perfectly normal design trade-off to implement some features in shaders instead of as fixed-function hardware. By your definition, every modern GPU built in the last decade is "sabotaging" OpenGL 1.x support, because fixed-function vertex and pixel processing hasn't been a thing in that long and it's all done in shaders now, even if you use the legacy APIs. Alyssa…

I'll agree with you when they'll support Vulkan properly. Until then I see them as a hostile entity to common GPU APIs adoption.

You're talking about macOS. We're talking about AGX2. If you want to complain about Apple's API support in macOS, a discussion about AGX2 support for Linux is not the right venue.

I am, quite honestly, getting very tired of all the off-topic gratuitous Apple bashing in articles about our Linux porting project.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#35

Post by MegaDeKay »

lyssa wrote: post #12
iso8859-1 wrote: post #11

Is Collabora paying Alyssa Rosenzweig for this work?

No, this is purely a hobby project undertaken in my spare time. (The email addresses on the git commits are force-of-habit, apologies for the confusion.)

That you are doing this "on the side" makes your accomplishments even more incredible. Keep up the amazing work!

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#36

Post by dylan604 »

glial wrote: post #27

I'm not really a developer so maybe I'm just not understanding something, but why in the world isn't Apple making it easier for people to optimize for the M1? I would think it's in their best interest to help developers make the best software possible, by sharing information about how to leverage the architecture. It's bizarre to me that the best sources of information are posts like this.

Why do you think they are not? They are helping developers developing for the macOS platform that they own,develop,support. They are not responsible for 3rd part OSes and the development on those platforms. Why would you expect anything else based on their history and track record for closed/walled ecosystems?

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#37

Post by stirlo »

irjustin wrote: post #13

Unrelated - All this work is done by an 18 year old. Absolutely incredible. Some people are simply built differently and admittedly, it makes me jealous.

Wow, hopefully they are getting enough in donations/sponsorship to compensate them for their extraordinary efforts. It’s very easy to see these skills getting snapped up for a multiple 6 figure salary in the near future…

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#38

Post by dylan604 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #20
conradev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about this comment on each of Alyssa’s posts[1] rubs me the wrong way. I find her work remarkable even without the context of her age. Why mention it? Highlighting it is almost diminutive, even though I know that the comment is not intended to be that way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875552

Because it’s interesting and intent matters. Maybe you’re being too sensitive, and too vicariously sensitive, about a fact that’s obviously stand-out interesting.

Yes, I am very impressed with the fact that the person with this level of skill and understanding of the task at hand is ONLY 18. How could pointing out the impressively young age be considered bad? The percentage of young people that have this level of skill in whatever aspect is very small and is a valid thing to recognize.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#39

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #38
hombre_fatal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s interesting and intent matters. Maybe you’re being too sensitive, and too vicariously sensitive, about a fact that’s obviously stand-out interesting.

Yes, I am very impressed with the fact that the person with this level of skill and understanding of the task at hand is ONLY 18. How could pointing out the impressively young age be considered bad? The percentage of young people that have this level of skill in whatever aspect is very small and is a valid thing to recognize.

[deleted]

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part III

#40

Post by marcan_42 »

raphlinus wrote: post #21

This is top-notch and very impressive work. I'm currently in the middle of tuning performance of piet-gpu for the Pixel 4[1], and I find myself relying on similar open resources from the Freedreno project. When the time comes to get this running efficiently on M1, having detailed knowledge of the hardware will be similarly invaluable - just the info on registers and occupancy is an important start. Is there a way to…

Alyssa isn't personally taking donations for her work on this project, but she suggests you donate to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network or the Software Freedom Conservancy instead :)
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