MoltenVK 1.0.20 Released To Continue Advancing Vulkan On macOS

[GruenSein]

Quick question: Has anyone here even the slightest clue how the feature sets and paradigms of current graphics APIs compare? It‘s all just meta-talk about who might potentially be inclined to develop for one or the other API.. Man, these religious guessing-debates are tedious... particularly, when hardly anyone here even uses any Apple-made products. What do you even care what they do?

The main takeaway here is: Apple is not looking to do you (the Linux crowd, that is) any favors and they think that their Metal-only approach can work for them and their users. We‘ll find out if they are right. Also, apparently Vulkan and Metal are similar enough so that large portions can be mapped to each other without too much trouble. So, superiority certainly can’t be based on significantly different feature sets. If any API was to be considered superior at all, it probably boils down to ease of use and such.

To me, it looks like they might be getting away with their in-house API and GPUs. If they end up offering some great features, those will be available to devs in a timely manner. And the devs who don’t care about Metal can simply use the apparently pretty functional MoltenVK

[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?

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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

[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?

[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.

[dimko]

MoltenVK because FU APPLE

[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>