MoltenVK 1.0.20 Released To Continue Advancing Vulkan On macOS

[Luke_Wolf]

What makes it superior?

Nothing at all. However because it has the Apple logo stamped on it Marc is probably contractually required to praise it above all.

[johanb]

Metal is superior to Vulkan and AMD knows it or they wouldn't port ProRenderer directly to it. Apple has zero interest in opening up Metal to replace Vulkan, any more than Nvidia has an interest of adopting OpenCL for CUDA.

<sarcasm>

Of course, that must be the only possible reason why they ported it to Metal!

It is not possible at all that it's because Apple doesn't support any other low-level graphics API than Metal, no that definitely cannot be it!

You clearly stated lots of convincing arguments for why Metal is superior in your post, so that must be it!

</sarcasm>

[dimko]

MoltenVK because FU APPLE

[dimko]

Metal is superior to Vulkan and AMD knows it or they wouldn't port ProRenderer directly to it. Apple has zero interest in opening up Metal to replace Vulkan, any more than Nvidia has an interest of adopting OpenCL for CUDA.

One of aspects of standart's superiority, and big and important one at that - ability to multi platform. I would describe it's 50% of overall superiority. Now, I grub popcorn and listen to your clarification, how Metal that only works on less than 10% of all computers out there is somehow superior.

[Nille_kungen]

I remember some ios app that got dropped because it used this and that there was an update to moltenvk.
was that app accepted after the update?

[Michael]

I remember some ios app that got dropped because it used this and that there was an update to moltenvk.
was that app accepted after the update?

You must have missed this: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...pdated-MVK-App

[DavidSan]

One of aspects of standart's superiority, and big and important one at that - ability to multi platform. I would describe it's 50% of overall superiority. Now, I grub popcorn and listen to your clarification, how Metal that only works on less than 10% of all computers out there is somehow superior.

Superiority is very relative. What to some people is superior, must not be to others.

Vulkan has the benefit to be a standard API across different manufacturers just like OpenGL; however, that could also be problem since supporting different vendors may lead to the "common-denominator" approach that may cause a particular feature not being implemented because it is not supported on the majority of hardware, or not being popular enough.

Besides Apple strong interest in energy efficiency, Apple has the additional benefit of being developers of their own GPUs primarily used in iOS devices. This, and having control of the full stack of software development allows them to potentially implement features quickly rather than waiting until everyone agrees on it. Historically, this "agreement process" proved to be an issue that affected the Mac as a gaming platform since Windows DirectX, which was completely controlled by Microsoft, was quicker refining its API in comparison to OpenGL.

[M@GOid]

Metal is superio r to Vulkan and AMD knows it or they wouldn't port ProRenderer directly to it.

What AMD know is that they are now the sole vendor of dGPUs on Macs, replacing Nvidia. Do you really think they will say "It's my way or the high way" to Apple, on the mater of graphics API on MacOS?

[M@GOid]

Superiority is very relative. What to some people is superior, must not be to others.

Vulkan has the benefit to be a standard API across different manufacturers just like OpenGL; however, that could also be problem since supporting different vendors may lead to the "common-denominator" approach that may cause a particular feature not being implemented because it is not supported on the majority of hardware, or not being popular enough.

That could also backfire. Some developer may not put the extra effort in the Metal version, because it is alien and they may not think it worth the effort. We here on the Linux side of games, know how a smaller percentage of market share can affect the quality of the port. And we use standard APIs, also available on the market leader (Windows). Now imagine porting things for a small platform AND a alien graphic API, like MacOS and Metal.

[mike44]

One of aspects of standart's superiority, a

Typo should be standard.

Apple to have Metal is no problem, but not allowing opensource Vulkan drivers is another set of shoes. Don't they even allow opensource in their store?