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

[cytomax55]

Mixed feelings about the energy being spent on something closed source but w.e to each their own... 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

[Charlie68]

Remember that the reason that Nouveau sucks as bad as it does today isn't just because Nvidia provides no documentation, they actively and deliberately stonewall the project by packaging and licensing their firmware blobs in a way where Nouveau will never be able to do 3D rendering, video decoding, and power management without Nvidia's blessing for particular models and generations. While from what i've heard this kind of insurmountable problem hasn't been run into on the Apple reverse engineering effort yet.

If you are forced to reverse engineer it is because there is no documentation.

[iskra32]

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.

Anyway kudos for the work, it will be very useful in the future.

Remember that the reason that Nouveau sucks as bad as it does today isn't just because Nvidia provides no documentation, they actively and deliberately stonewall the project by packaging and licensing their firmware blobs in a way where Nouveau will never be able to do 3D rendering, video decoding, and power management without Nvidia's blessing for particular models and generations. While from what i've heard this kind of insurmountable problem hasn't been run into on the Apple reverse engineering effort yet.

[lucrus]

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.

Anyway kudos for the work, it will be very useful in the future.

[perpetually high]

She's a real superstar. Glad we have her.

[tildearrow]

I really look forward to this. Even if it is a GPU exclusive to one manufacturer with a bad reputation on Linux land, this is an impressive and massive effort..... for just one developer.

[phoronix]

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

Alyssa Rosenzweig spoke today at the virtual X.Org Developers Conference about the ongoing work for bringing up Linux display and graphics support on the Apple M1 graphics processor...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-AGX-XDC2021