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When Metal was initially developed and even when it was released, Vulkan wasn't even a proposed project yet. The only comparable thing was Mantle from AMD (whic

by dagmx 7y ago

When Metal was initially developed and even when it was released, Vulkan wasn't even a proposed project yet. The only comparable thing was Mantle from AMD (which later evolved into Vulkan). At the time NVidia were still saying use OpenGL with AZDO techniques and on mobile, you were stuck with OpenGL ES, with a multitude of issues. Optimization of existing code happens at a lower level but if you can gear an API for optimal use of your hardware and existing APIs, you make it easier for developers to write code that will have a better shot at being optimized. Not all code optimizes the same way. Also what you view as taxing developers, can also be flipped around as being able to make an API that is a lot easier for the developers on their platform. And indeed, metal is probably the easiest of the modern graphics APIs to get started with, with a very light learning curve even compared to OpenGL. All while not sacrificing performance and expressiveness for more involved development. Vulkan meanwhile remains very inaccessible to many developers even with graphics backgrounds. Let's not also forget that apple isn't an outlier for lockin, and actually are quite open. OpenCL, Clang, webgpu, swift etc are all very open and cross platform. Meanwhile even things like directx are locked to windows. The real goal isn't lockin. It's providing the best API to developers to let them get in quickly while also optimizing for their hardware. Lockin is an unfortunate side effect but they're also completely succesful in meeting their actual goals.

shmerl 7y ago
> The real goal isn't lockin. That's an excuse, since the result is lock-in. I.e. if Apple so much wanted Metal - let them have it. But how does that prevent them from supporting Vulkan, for those who don't want to waste resources on duplicating work and want to reuse their existing Vulkan codebase on Apple systems? But no, Apple forces you to use Metal. So the claim that it's for developers' benefit won't fly. It's for Apple's benefit very clearly. WebGPU is also a counter example, since Apple there try to prevent adoption of common formats like SPIR-V. When it comes to sabotaging interoperability, Apple are always among the first.
- dagmx 7y ago
  Apple does all their driver and API development in house. Supporting Vulkan would mean a lot more effort on their part. Unlike windows and Linux where support is handled by the GPU vendor instead. Why support Vulkan, which is arguably harder to use and takes more resources of their internal development teams, when they have an API that provides all the benefits and is arguably a better API? Especially when the major off the shelf engines already support metal. It's diminishing returns at this point. Personally I'd be quite happy to have Vulkan support on mac, but if you take a step back from your inalienable position that it's a conspiracy, there's actually very sound reasoning behind it. You may not agree with the decision, but you weaken your argument when you're trying to force everything to fit a black and white narrative. The reality is much more nuanced.
  - banachtarski 7y ago
    > Apple does all their driver and API development in house Not OP but the games and film industry believe this here is the problem. The additional effort to support common APIs is an artificial self-imposed problem resulting in worse software.
    - dagmx 7y ago
      I'll definitely agree here that it's got its share of pros and cons, and having worked in both realtime and film work, it is difficult. But on the flip side, it does fit in with apples ability to develop very tailored platforms and make very easy to use APIs. So while I often find myself on the wrong side of the double edged sword, I do also feel their decisions make sense as well. And honestly, having done dx9-12, OpenGL and Vulkan, I won't argue against how easy to use metal is.
      - banachtarski 7y ago
        I'm sort of mixed on how easy Metal is. Having to support Objective-C and/or Swift as part of the build toolchain is sort of a headache and Metal actually isn't low-level enough for me to support a lot of the optimizations I can do in DX12/Vulkan and especially doesn't come close to console APIs (which you'd think should be possible given that they can specialize for their hardware). My feeling is that for driver APIs, it's ok for the API to be lower level since users (and other developers) generally won't need to deal with that anyways.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Google is the company currently driving WebGPU efforts and has shown the fruits of their labour at Google IO. To the point that what Intel has contributed to WebGL 2.0 compute shaders implementation on Chrome might be thrown away, as Google now considers it needless in presence of WebGPU. Which by the way is based on HLSL, just as Khronos is also finding out on their Vulkan PR efforts, is the favourite shading language among professional game devs. Which is why Samsung and Google are the two biggest contributors to HLSL to SPIR-V compiler.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Shader language shouldn't matter as long as it's compiled to standard SPIR-V. There is no point to limit it to one language.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      It matters if the available tooling isn't practical.
      - erikpukinskis 7y ago
        What do you mean tooling? Like Unity?
        pjmlp 7y ago
        IDE like support for shader development, something that all proprietary APIs support out of the box, and both OpenGL and now Vulkan have always been lacking. Usually what gets thrown by OEMs or FOSS devs looks more like sample apps, are OEM specific thus making the API not as portable as advertised, or feel short. For example you can pinpoint specific pixels and trace back to which code lines from each shader were involved in rendering the pixel. Check the Metal debugging talk at WWDC 2019.
slavik81 7y ago
I would honestly have been happy if we just had OpenGL compute shaders available on all desktop operating systems. That was standardized in 2012 by OpenGL 4.3, two years before Metal. > Let's not also forget that apple isn't an outlier for lockin, and actually are quite open. OpenCL, Clang, webgpu, swift etc are all very open and cross platform. OpenCL is deprecated on macOS, and hasn't been updated past OpenCL 1.2 (2011). It was killed in favour of Metal. I hope that WebGPU is a good cross-platform API for GPU compute when the standard is finalized and implemented, but I've learned not to count my chickens before they hatch.

by dagmx 7y ago

shmerl 7y ago

> The real goal isn't lockin. That's an excuse, since the result is lock-in. I.e. if Apple so much wanted Metal - let them have it. But how does that prevent them from supporting Vulkan, for those who don't want to waste resources on duplicating work and want to reuse their existing Vulkan codebase on Apple systems? But no, Apple forces you to use Metal. So the claim that it's for developers' benefit won't fly. It's for Apple's benefit very clearly. WebGPU is also a counter example, since Apple there try to prevent adoption of common formats like SPIR-V. When it comes to sabotaging interoperability, Apple are always among the first.

dagmx 7y ago
Apple does all their driver and API development in house. Supporting Vulkan would mean a lot more effort on their part. Unlike windows and Linux where support is handled by the GPU vendor instead. Why support Vulkan, which is arguably harder to use and takes more resources of their internal development teams, when they have an API that provides all the benefits and is arguably a better API? Especially when the major off the shelf engines already support metal. It's diminishing returns at this point. Personally I'd be quite happy to have Vulkan support on mac, but if you take a step back from your inalienable position that it's a conspiracy, there's actually very sound reasoning behind it. You may not agree with the decision, but you weaken your argument when you're trying to force everything to fit a black and white narrative. The reality is much more nuanced.
- banachtarski 7y ago
  > Apple does all their driver and API development in house Not OP but the games and film industry believe this here is the problem. The additional effort to support common APIs is an artificial self-imposed problem resulting in worse software.
  - dagmx 7y ago
    I'll definitely agree here that it's got its share of pros and cons, and having worked in both realtime and film work, it is difficult. But on the flip side, it does fit in with apples ability to develop very tailored platforms and make very easy to use APIs. So while I often find myself on the wrong side of the double edged sword, I do also feel their decisions make sense as well. And honestly, having done dx9-12, OpenGL and Vulkan, I won't argue against how easy to use metal is.
    - banachtarski 7y ago
      I'm sort of mixed on how easy Metal is. Having to support Objective-C and/or Swift as part of the build toolchain is sort of a headache and Metal actually isn't low-level enough for me to support a lot of the optimizations I can do in DX12/Vulkan and especially doesn't come close to console APIs (which you'd think should be possible given that they can specialize for their hardware). My feeling is that for driver APIs, it's ok for the API to be lower level since users (and other developers) generally won't need to deal with that anyways.
pjmlp 7y ago
Google is the company currently driving WebGPU efforts and has shown the fruits of their labour at Google IO. To the point that what Intel has contributed to WebGL 2.0 compute shaders implementation on Chrome might be thrown away, as Google now considers it needless in presence of WebGPU. Which by the way is based on HLSL, just as Khronos is also finding out on their Vulkan PR efforts, is the favourite shading language among professional game devs. Which is why Samsung and Google are the two biggest contributors to HLSL to SPIR-V compiler.
- shmerl 7y ago
  Shader language shouldn't matter as long as it's compiled to standard SPIR-V. There is no point to limit it to one language.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    It matters if the available tooling isn't practical.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      What do you mean tooling? Like Unity?
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        IDE like support for shader development, something that all proprietary APIs support out of the box, and both OpenGL and now Vulkan have always been lacking. Usually what gets thrown by OEMs or FOSS devs looks more like sample apps, are OEM specific thus making the API not as portable as advertised, or feel short. For example you can pinpoint specific pixels and trace back to which code lines from each shader were involved in rendering the pixel. Check the Metal debugging talk at WWDC 2019.

slavik81 7y ago

I would honestly have been happy if we just had OpenGL compute shaders available on all desktop operating systems. That was standardized in 2012 by OpenGL 4.3, two years before Metal. > Let's not also forget that apple isn't an outlier for lockin, and actually are quite open. OpenCL, Clang, webgpu, swift etc are all very open and cross platform. OpenCL is deprecated on macOS, and hasn't been updated past OpenCL 1.2 (2011). It was killed in favour of Metal. I hope that WebGPU is a good cross-platform API for GPU compute when the standard is finalized and implemented, but I've learned not to count my chickens before they hatch.