5 ms·

Let's not encourage the continued existence of metal. More vendor lock in on Apple platforms is hardly needed nor a positive thing.

johncolanduoni 10y ago
Eh, I can't blame them terribly for introducing it. It was pre-Vulkan so they didn't have any open options when it came to a DX12/Vulkan-level graphics API. There's a Vulkan-on-Metal implementation[1], and I'd have absolutely no complaints about the platform if there was simply an open source equivalent (well, maybe geometry shaders). [1]: https://moltengl.com/ https://moltengl.com/
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Given Vulkan is in some ways lower-level than Metal, AIUI, surely there's a significant cost that would make targetting Metal directly a better solution for things performance-critical?
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    Most of the critical low level of components of Vulkan are there: multiple command queues with manual synchronization, resource heaps (although they are optional for Metal), mixed compute/render support. Mostly Metal simplifies some of the distinctions Vulkan drivers may dump on the user: for example, Metal has only one command queue type while a Vulkan driver may force the user to manage several. The biggest hurdle I can think of is geometry/tesselation shaders. Newer versions of Metal support tesselation shaders, but they work rather differently than Vulkan's (they're based on a compute shader, instead of the Hull/Domain split other APIs use). Geometry shaders aren't supported at all.
phire 10y ago
I don't own a Mac, so I haven't actually tried Metal. But from the documentation, it looks like quite a nice and simple API that also exposes the modern capabilities of shaders. It would probably make a great base for a new webgpu API. This existence of Metal isn't really an issue. The real issue is that apple has silently shifted to a mode of only supporting Metal, not implementing vulkan and neglecting opengl.
- nomel 10y ago
  > It would probably make a great base for a new webgpu API. Like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593272
pipio21 10y ago
Oh, yes, lets do it! Having worked in OpenGL-DirectX for decades we suffered immensely from "standard by committee" and lack of competition in OpenGL. When I was young I was naive and thought things would improve, but it was so painful. Most people doing graphics have to implement an abstraction layer anyway for handling DirectX, vulkan or old OpenGL. Once you have it, it is not so much work adding one additional back end. I now believe competition is great and one of the things that made Europe for example to prosper while China stagnated for 5 centuries. If you say for example: "We only support text shaders because it is simple and works well enough" and someone else uses and API or DOM and it goes 200 times faster, I want the option to let the first guys down and pick the 200X improvement version, not having to stand the original "because it is the standard and we don't care".
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
  Competition is great; metal is an afterthought. Vulkan is still unsupported; the OpenGL implementation is still out of date and buggy. If anything, Apple needs competition with themselves. There's no route to a modern graphics API on macOS (or iOS for that matter).
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    An afterthought is pretty strong word. It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.). It's definitely miles ahead of OpenGL on any platform. What Vulkan features do you think can't be added into Metal without effectively trashing the whole thing?
    - throwaway91111 10y ago
      No, you're correct, afterthought is not the word I want to use. Apples actions certainly show forethought and planning. I meant instead that the graphics support overall has felt like an afterthought: radar bugs open without meaningful response for months, outdated graphics hardware and drivers, no option for choice between brands when that means you can't run CUDA on "pro" computers, no support for vulkan (though I think there's an official mapping Vulkan into Metal that hasn't materialized yet)... the list gets tiring to read after 15 years of waiting for apple to actively support their software/hardware combos to their equivalent capacities on windows, let alone supporting recent hardware or novel apis. However, I can't help but seeing it modeled on the Direct X vendor lock-in model that starved Apple of games (and users because of those games). While it may not be a sign of change in Apple, it is a sign to me I shouldn't depend on them to provide products that meet my needs as a cross-platform developer. All those years I invested in a neglected OpenGL I should have devoted instead to directx; perhaps I would be less bitter now.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

Eh, I can't blame them terribly for introducing it. It was pre-Vulkan so they didn't have any open options when it came to a DX12/Vulkan-level graphics API. There's a Vulkan-on-Metal implementation[1], and I'd have absolutely no complaints about the platform if there was simply an open source equivalent (well, maybe geometry shaders). [1]: https://moltengl.com/ https://moltengl.com/

gsnedders 10y ago
Given Vulkan is in some ways lower-level than Metal, AIUI, surely there's a significant cost that would make targetting Metal directly a better solution for things performance-critical?
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Most of the critical low level of components of Vulkan are there: multiple command queues with manual synchronization, resource heaps (although they are optional for Metal), mixed compute/render support. Mostly Metal simplifies some of the distinctions Vulkan drivers may dump on the user: for example, Metal has only one command queue type while a Vulkan driver may force the user to manage several. The biggest hurdle I can think of is geometry/tesselation shaders. Newer versions of Metal support tesselation shaders, but they work rather differently than Vulkan's (they're based on a compute shader, instead of the Hull/Domain split other APIs use). Geometry shaders aren't supported at all.

phire 10y ago

I don't own a Mac, so I haven't actually tried Metal. But from the documentation, it looks like quite a nice and simple API that also exposes the modern capabilities of shaders. It would probably make a great base for a new webgpu API. This existence of Metal isn't really an issue. The real issue is that apple has silently shifted to a mode of only supporting Metal, not implementing vulkan and neglecting opengl.

nomel 10y ago
> It would probably make a great base for a new webgpu API. Like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593272

pipio21 10y ago

Oh, yes, lets do it! Having worked in OpenGL-DirectX for decades we suffered immensely from "standard by committee" and lack of competition in OpenGL. When I was young I was naive and thought things would improve, but it was so painful. Most people doing graphics have to implement an abstraction layer anyway for handling DirectX, vulkan or old OpenGL. Once you have it, it is not so much work adding one additional back end. I now believe competition is great and one of the things that made Europe for example to prosper while China stagnated for 5 centuries. If you say for example: "We only support text shaders because it is simple and works well enough" and someone else uses and API or DOM and it goes 200 times faster, I want the option to let the first guys down and pick the 200X improvement version, not having to stand the original "because it is the standard and we don't care".

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
Competition is great; metal is an afterthought. Vulkan is still unsupported; the OpenGL implementation is still out of date and buggy. If anything, Apple needs competition with themselves. There's no route to a modern graphics API on macOS (or iOS for that matter).
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  An afterthought is pretty strong word. It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.). It's definitely miles ahead of OpenGL on any platform. What Vulkan features do you think can't be added into Metal without effectively trashing the whole thing?
  - throwaway91111 10y ago
    No, you're correct, afterthought is not the word I want to use. Apples actions certainly show forethought and planning. I meant instead that the graphics support overall has felt like an afterthought: radar bugs open without meaningful response for months, outdated graphics hardware and drivers, no option for choice between brands when that means you can't run CUDA on "pro" computers, no support for vulkan (though I think there's an official mapping Vulkan into Metal that hasn't materialized yet)... the list gets tiring to read after 15 years of waiting for apple to actively support their software/hardware combos to their equivalent capacities on windows, let alone supporting recent hardware or novel apis. However, I can't help but seeing it modeled on the Direct X vendor lock-in model that starved Apple of games (and users because of those games). While it may not be a sign of change in Apple, it is a sign to me I shouldn't depend on them to provide products that meet my needs as a cross-platform developer. All those years I invested in a neglected OpenGL I should have devoted instead to directx; perhaps I would be less bitter now.