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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

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Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#71

Post by zozbot234 »

finaard wrote: post #63
rowanG077 wrote: post #29

Honestly kind of heartbreaking to see her leave asahi Linux. She has done insane work building the vulkan driver from scratch. I wish her well working at Intel. If I ever buy an Intel GPU I can rest much easier it will work well on Linux. If she is working on the Linux driver stack that is.

There isn't really anything left to do for her - everything missing (including work on the newer graphics chips) can be somewhat easily done by less talented people, building on her work. She did the challenging stuff she cares about. One aspect of nerd brain often is that you can hyperfocus on challenging stuff, but can't get the motivation to work on stuff you don't care about - and even what would be a 20 minute t…

This is of course great as long as you can find enough "challenging" work to perform, but any successful project is going to involve a whole lot of seemingly "boring" work. A big part of true maturity and professionalism is being able to find the interesting challenge even in these more run-of-the-mill tasks and successfully engage with them.

(Mind you, I'm not talking about a matter of inborn temperament or character, much less a moral flaw! Rather, finding the compelling challenge even in "boring" tasks is a valuable skill and situational tactic that anyone should explicitly learn about and aim to acquire as part of becoming a mature professional, not a matter of morality or somehow being dismissed as "lazy"!)

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#72

Post by finaard »

rowanG077 wrote: post #66
finaard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really anything left to do for her - everything missing (including work on the newer graphics chips) can be somewhat easily done by less talented people, building on her work. She did the challenging stuff she cares about. One aspect of nerd brain often is that you can hyperfocus on challenging stuff, but can't get the motivation to work on stuff you don't care about - and even what would be a 20 minute t…

M3, M4 and soon to be M5 are ready to be cracked open :). From what I understand they are actually different somewhat hardware wise. So it's really not like there would not be a continuations of this work. But of course it's natural to want something else after years of working on the project.

Take into account that she's focusing on the 3D stack, not the overall hardware. Even with hardware differences there's a good chance it's not different enough to make it an interesting new challenge.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#73

Post by jondwillis »

r_lee wrote: post #70
finaard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really anything left to do for her - everything missing (including work on the newer graphics chips) can be somewhat easily done by less talented people, building on her work. She did the challenging stuff she cares about. One aspect of nerd brain often is that you can hyperfocus on challenging stuff, but can't get the motivation to work on stuff you don't care about - and even what would be a 20 minute t…

Sounds like ADD to me. Easy to be labeled as "Lazy" etc.

Yeah, no way there’s any evolutionary fitness to having a brain that only works on problems it finds worthwhile. /s

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#74

Post by finaard »

rc00 wrote: post #53
laweijfmvo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i hope some day a used M1/M2 macbook air will be the greatest linux laptop around

I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Forget the hostile nature Apple has proven to possess when consumers dare treat their hardware as if paying for it makes it their own. Qualcomm has been beating the marketing drum on this instead of delivering. Ampere has delivered excellent hardware but does not seem intere…

As somebody that has worked in a company that did Qualcomm devices in the past - Qualcomm just cares about money grabbing, and is not any less hostile to developers than Apple.

If you want to do a device, and your only chip option is Qualcomm I'd recommend not doing a device at all.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#75

Post by mrheosuper »

Keyframe wrote: post #27
Tiberium wrote: post #18

Sorry to hijack, but since the topic is related: is the development of Asahi Linux still actively ongoing, or has slowed down a lot? The progress for M1 and M2 was steady and now almost everything is done, but the M3+ work still seems to not have started. And with major contributors leaving the project I'm kind of worried for the future of Asahi (on newer Apple hardware).

I'd pay easily let's say $100-200 a year to have linux running on modern apple laptops with full features. I'm sure I'm not alone. Their hardware, "our" OS would be perfect. Well, except notch and lack of OLED - but, reportedly that's in the works too.

the macbook pro uses MiniLed, in term of contrast, it's quite good, much better than ips.

Macbook pro display is one of the best laptop display.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#76

Post by chao- »

kccqzy wrote: post #7
syntaxing wrote: post #2

What an end to an era. It's crazy to think she started this journey at 18 and now finished 5 years later. Not many people believed they would be able to make the GPU work in Asahi linux. Kinda curious what her "Onto the next challenge!" link means. Is she working for Intel Xe-HPG next?

Yes I think so. Her resume says she started working for Intel on open source graphics driver this month.

Wish her the best with this. Intel staying competitive in GPUs can only benefit the consumer. Those who want a mid-tier graphic card, without paying to compete with AI use cases, may not a huge group, but we do exist! Those who use desktop Linux may be a small group among that small group, but we do exist!

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#77

Post by Cthulhu_ »

kubb wrote: post #60
anon-3988 wrote: post #59

1. student at uoft 2. a lead in a job at Collabora 3. very succesful and ambitious hobby project how tf does she juggle and managed to do all this? I can barely do one of the above properly.

One of the few people who are actually competent. Although most likely she’s well compensated, and doesn’t have to waste time on useless efforts at work, this level of discipline and striving towards a goal is just very rare in general. Possibly also no family, limited social life and no other hobbies.

One of the unspoken benefits of being young, you're unlikely to have grown into a management position and can focus on not-management stuff.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#78

Post by swiftcoder »

mrheosuper wrote: post #75
Keyframe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pay easily let's say $100-200 a year to have linux running on modern apple laptops with full features. I'm sure I'm not alone. Their hardware, "our" OS would be perfect. Well, except notch and lack of OLED - but, reportedly that's in the works too.

the macbook pro uses MiniLed, in term of contrast, it's quite good, much better than ips. Macbook pro display is one of the best laptop display.

And somehow it has way less blooming than other mini-led displays I have used. Not clear how they pull that feat off exactly

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#79

Post by zozbot234 »

finaard wrote: post #72
rowanG077 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M3, M4 and soon to be M5 are ready to be cracked open :). From what I understand they are actually different somewhat hardware wise. So it's really not like there would not be a continuations of this work. But of course it's natural to want something else after years of working on the project.

Take into account that she's focusing on the 3D stack, not the overall hardware. Even with hardware differences there's a good chance it's not different enough to make it an interesting new challenge.

Given the features that have been advertised for the M3+ graphics and compute stack, there's rather a good chance that it is different enough to create big, new challenges for third-party support.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

#80

Post by zozbot234 »

finaard wrote: post #74
rc00 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Forget the hostile nature Apple has proven to possess when consumers dare treat their hardware as if paying for it makes it their own. Qualcomm has been beating the marketing drum on this instead of delivering. Ampere has delivered excellent hardware but does not seem intere…

As somebody that has worked in a company that did Qualcomm devices in the past - Qualcomm just cares about money grabbing, and is not any less hostile to developers than Apple. If you want to do a device, and your only chip option is Qualcomm I'd recommend not doing a device at all.

FLOSS stacks for Qualcomm-based devices are actually a lot more feature complete than some other brands like MediaTek or Exynos. Still nowhere near any kind of "daily driver" status but at least getting somewhere, whilst others have yet to even get started.
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