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> If Apple really think we need something other than "vulkan" then they should push to make "metal" a competing open standard Metal predates Vulkan by years. T
by frou_dh 7y ago
> If Apple really think we need something other than "vulkan" then they should push to make "metal" a competing open standard
Metal predates Vulkan by years. They were already using Metal in shipping products before Vulkan existed.
- tomxor 7y agoWhy does that mean they shouldn't make it an open standard?
- frou_dh 7y agocos randomers don't get to dictate the scope of the project after-the-fact
- tomxor 7y agoIf "randomers" are developers who are repelled by the proprietary nature of their graphics API "randomers" may well dictate the scope of the project.
- derefr 7y ago"Metal" is a vertically-integrated software stack that goes up into Objective-C runtime land. An open standard based upon it would require that there be an open-standard Objective-C runtime and toolchain to use in working with it. Unlike Vulkan, the lowest-level, C-ABI, non-type-safe parts of Metal aren't exposed as public APIs, AFAIK. You could maybe standardize those, but Apple presumably wants to reserve the right to change them while just keeping the higher-level ObjC ABI stable.
- astrange 7y ago> Unlike Vulkan, the lowest-level, C-ABI, non-type-safe parts of Metal aren't exposed as public APIs, AFAIK. They don't even really exist. Most Metal APIs are defined as protocols (id<MTL...>) for a reason; if you look at the objects you get back, they're directly implemented by the GPU driver.