Apple Announces A New 3D API, OpenGL Competitor: Metal

[grndzro]

Both use OpenGL. Nvidia is heavily invested in OGL and has proven that it doesn't have the overhead AMD/Microsoft claim it has if used properly(e.g, arb_buffer_storage with persistent mapping)

AMD has arb_buffer_storage now also.

[dungeon]

True, but in the end of that metodology one must just go out of business .

[Ancurio]

Except what happened here is the exact opposite of a "standard that covers everyone's use cases".

[Ancurio]

AMD has arb_buffer_storage now also.

In fact Graham Sellers from AMD was the one who spearheaded this extension.

[scottishduck]

Nobody is going to bother to support ios if they don't support GLES. Android __dominates__ the mobile marketspace, especially for game sales.

App revenue on iOS is many times larger than Android and has been since iOS began.

[TheOne]

App revenue on iOS is many times larger than Android and has been since iOS began.

Any evidence to back that up?

[pasaulais]

Because really that is the model we should have - it should not take complex overhead ridden APIs like OpenCL to add, say, a billion numbers to one another and store the results back into a gigabyte of memory. It should be as simple as having an async call in C++ or a Go routine.

I know there is currently no publicly available implementation, but have you had a look at SYCL? It should be much closer to what you describe (easy to spawn GPU kernels from C++, using the same language and same source) than something like OpenCL.

[emblemparade]

I don't think Metal is intended to be a *cross-platform* competitor: meaning, Apple is not expecting the industry as a whole to move to it.

It seems that Metal is intended specifically to solve a problem in the Apple world: many devs target Apple exclusively, but they must wallow in the complex and slow OpenGL ES API. So now Apple is providing these devs with an alternate API: the competition is thus entirely within the Apple world.

If it's a super great API, it might gain support outside Apple. But I would be amazed if Apple is actually planning for that to happen.

[johnc]

A bit off topic but does anybody see striking resemblance to some Linux DE designs in the new OS X? The flat dock idea, the new window bars like GNOME Shell, the black transparent top bar, the Dash-like search feature. wtf

[toni]

It seems that Metal is intended specifically to solve a problem in the Apple world: many devs target Apple exclusively, but they must wallow in the complex and slow OpenGL ES API.

Why do you say gles3.0 api is slow? I think it's a gratuitious claim.