Early Gallium3D Work Has Begun Around Apple's M1 GPU With New "AGX" Driver

[Boland]

Is that a conjecture, or do you happen to know that the OpenGL drivers are written against private Metal extensions? I ask the question because I feel like Rozenzweig would have looked there rather than just guessing the fields.

We know that OpenGL runs on top of metal on the M1, and that it supports features that aren’t supposed to be in metal. Metal itself doesn’t have an extension mechanism like OpenGL does. But one of the members of the MoltenVK team found undocumented private features a while back for something else also.

[microcode]

It does, but the firmware is shipped with the hardware and loaded onto the GPU prior to booting into the OS so that's not an issue.

Also presumably since the software license is part of the hardware, firmware updates could be distributable or at least downloadable on the device... maybe. May not even be necessary in the grand scheme, the thing seems to work fine as shipped, honestly (but there could be new video decode accel enabled through firmware in the future, maybe).

[sarmad]

There's a lot of work to do with M1 GPU yet. Hope it won't end up like Nouveau.

It most likely will end up like Nouveau.

[smitty3268]

except maybe the M1 does not need signed firmwares to be loaded into the DRM driver (maybe, but I don't know)

It does, but the firmware is shipped with the hardware and loaded onto the GPU prior to booting into the OS so that's not an issue.

[cmakeshift]

this a nice thing untill the driver become to good and apple axe the efford

I'd like to see Apple try. And fail miserably.

[microcode]

That's like when a certain someone suggests "Just write that XYZ feature yourself" where I think "I would if I could. Unless someone wants to give me a $1200/mo paid apprenticeship and mentor me then don't expect me doing it anytime soon". Unfortunately, programming is one of those things I can't teach myself from a book.

Who learns programming from a book? Just read and write programs until you know what you're doing. If you aren't interested in it, maybe it's not for you, but none of these excuses from you guys stack up. You have computers, you have access to all of the knowledge and expertise required to become competent to do these things, and if you gained that expertise you'd be making enough money that spending the 900USD the 16GB memory model costs would be worth the curiosity if you were intending invest any serious time into developing GPU drivers.

It is reasonable to question people's standing when they make these easy comments from the stands. Zink is in Mesa, and there is no way that Rozenzweig is unaware of it; so whether the Vulkan driver is first, or both the Vulkan and OpenGL drivers are enabled at the same time is a decision that will be made by somebody who is more informed about this than bystanders anyway.

[microcode]

The features are there because the M1 still has to support OpenGL on macOS. Although OpenGL runs on top on Metal, so Metal must support the features privately at the very least. They’re just not user accessible.

Is that a conjecture, or do you happen to know that the OpenGL drivers are written against private Metal extensions? I ask the question because I feel like Rozenzweig would have looked there rather than just guessing the fields.

[skeevy420]

Lack of programming knowledge or not having the hardware?

That's like when a certain someone suggests "Just write that XYZ feature yourself" where I think "I would if I could. Unless someone wants to give me a $1200/mo paid apprenticeship and mentor me then don't expect me doing it anytime soon". Unfortunately, programming is one of those things I can't teach myself from a book.

[lucrus]

There's a lot of work to do with M1 GPU yet. Hope it won't end up like Nouveau.

It will end up more or less the same, there's no real hope as of today for any different outcome, except maybe the M1 does not need signed firmwares to be loaded into the DRM driver (maybe, but I don't know), but, that aside, it still has to play catch up against Apple. That's more than enough to foresee it will be better than nothing, but far from optimal.

[StarterX4]

There's a lot of work to do with M1 GPU yet. Hope it won't end up like Nouveau.