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Reverse Engineering, Open-Source Driver Writing Continues For Apple's M1 GPU

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  • computerquip
    replied
    Originally posted by mdedetrich View Post

    From what I have heard Metal is not lower level than Vulkan, they are pretty much the same with metal only implementing a subset of Vulkan
    Vulkan is (at its core) lower-level and also more extensible than Metal. You can probably implement Metal with Vulkan. However, since Apple doesn't support Vulkan, what's ended up occurring is a scenario where we need Vulkan over Metal. Sooo, we ended up with an initiative for a particular subset of Vulkan called "Vulkan Portability" that's designed to be implemented over things like Metal. We don't get the full Vulkan API, and we don't even get a very conformant API either. The core extension provided by the Vulkan Portability initiative is VK_KHR_portability_subset which allows you to identify differences in the implementation caused by being forced to implement over something like Metal (or D3D12 for that matter).

    The implementation of Vulkan which includes support for VK_KHR_portability_subset and is based on Metal is called MoltenVK.
    Last edited by computerquip; 16 September 2021, 03:33 AM.

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  • Danny3
    replied
    So happy and proud that I have never been an Apple customer !
    As I am now by not being a Nvidia customer anymore.
    IMO, these companies are not to blame, but their users who enable them by giving them money to sit in a cage.

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  • mdedetrich
    replied
    Originally posted by tildearrow View Post

    I asked this as well in the other thread as well, and replies indicate that Alyssa has more experience with OpenGL than Vulkan, and that Metal is lower-level than Vulkan.
    From what I have heard Metal is not lower level than Vulkan, they are pretty much the same with metal only implementing a subset of Vulkan

    Leave a comment:


  • lucrus
    replied
    Originally posted by abott View Post
    As pointed out by another user, you have no idea what you're regurgitating.
    And you have no idea about how to be well behaved.

    Originally posted by abott View Post
    It won't end up the same as long as the reclocking isn't hardware locked.
    Reclocking has nothing to do with my statement. I'm not native english, so maybe I'm not able to convey my message well enough, but I was talking about the general situation, not this or that specific feature. And the general situation is that Apple does not give a f*ck about Linux or FOSS in general, as long as they do not need it. So they provide no documentation, no help, no answers, nothing about how their stuff should be programmed. I'd say Nvidia is just the same (*), so both drivers are basically doomed to be very limited in features, like being able to bring up the display and a bit more, but far from being a replacement for the closed source official driver (that, in the case of Apple, won't even exist for Linux).

    * I don't mean NVidia === Apple, but I do mean $nvidia === $apple, because when it comes to dollars, their business strategies are the same: a walled garden.

    Originally posted by abott View Post
    Which would pretty blow low, especially for Apple.
    You must be a fanboy. Or living under a rock in the last 45 years. Or you've bought a M1 and you don't want to admit you've been fooled by Apple.
    Last edited by lucrus; 16 September 2021, 03:27 AM.

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  • vb_linux
    replied
    Originally posted by abott View Post

    Spot on being half completely off base, sure. Did you not watch the video that mentions it's 4K60 on her desktop for the M1 GPU? As far as I know, Nvidia without reclocking can't do that. So it already isn't as bad as Nvidia.
    That may not be GPU bound though. Apple has had a hardware chip on their SOC for video decoding for a while.

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  • calc
    replied
    Originally posted by cytomax55 View Post
    Maybe one day there will be a actual apple hardware competitor thay people flock to when they want the build quality of apple but ability to run Linux on it
    Pretty much any business class PC laptop is better build quality than Apple proprietary non-repairable ewaste. Apple going on about how green their hardware is, is clearly a bad joke.

    In particular ThinkPad P/T/X series are far better across the board than anything from Apple and all have very detailed hardware maintenance manuals and are easily repairable. And Dell and HP’s business lines are great too.

    I wouldn’t use an Apple computer if it was given to me free.

    But I’m sure reverse engineering Apple’s proprietary hardware is a fun project for some.

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  • abott
    replied
    Originally posted by brad0 View Post

    More like he is spot on.
    Spot on being half completely off base, sure. Did you not watch the video that mentions it's 4K60 on her desktop for the M1 GPU? As far as I know, Nvidia without reclocking can't do that. So it already isn't as bad as Nvidia.

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  • brad0
    replied
    Originally posted by iskra32 View Post
    Obviously yes, but thats not my point. My point is that in 2021 the primary thing limiting Nouveau is Nvidia deliberately stonewalling the project rather than just investing zero effort in FOSS like most companies, which puts Nvidia a league above Broadcom, Mali, Vivante and from what we know Apple in terms of being scum. It also means that the AGX driver has the chance to suck less than nouveau.
    Even if NVIDIA wasn't stonewalling the project without documentation the driver will never be that good and feature complete. No the AGX driver will never suck less than Nouveau. The situation with Apple is even worse.

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  • brad0
    replied
    Originally posted by abott View Post
    As pointed out by another user, you have no idea what you're regurgitating.
    ​​​​​​​More like he is spot on.

    Originally posted by abott View Post
    Which would pretty blow low, especially for Apple.
    Not really. There is no expectation of the hardware working outside of macOS. If NVidia can do it Apple surely could too.

    Leave a comment:


  • brad0
    replied
    Originally posted by lucrus View Post
    It will end up like nouveau at best, but I'm not worried because I feel lucky enough to know what to buy and what to avoid.
    It will be even worse.

    Leave a comment:

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