5 ms·

So I guess eGPUs on ARM are pretty much a dead thing by now aren't they?

Gaelan 5y ago
My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers. Is there something in the announcement that made you think this will never happen, or just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation?
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  > My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers. Jeff Geerling's work on Raspberry Pi modules and extension boards found out its not possible at least on the PI4: From https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-ras... "... so far, the answer seems to be 'no.' Partly it's due to lack of support for I/O BAR space on the BCM2711 ARM SoC, and partly it may be due to driver bugs or features that are only supported on X86 or certain ARM architectures." So I wonder when people like Marcan say the hardware is there do they mean that the M1 doesn't have such I/O limitations? I know Tallos Blackbird POWER9 boards can work with discrete GPUs. I don't know if they are making use but I imagine amdgpu kernel module should work just as fine on a different arch. > just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation? Yes that's the case.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    The Raspberry Pi has a very different SoC from Apple's M1, why would it be relevant?
    - ulzeraj 5y ago
      I was just wondering if PCI-E discrete GPUs can work on ARM platforms at all.
      - gsnedders 5y ago
        Sure, of course they can, there's nothing about the ISA that's relevant there.
floatingatoll 5y ago
Apple confirmed they won’t be supported during M1 announce week.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Maybe they discovered some practical problems we don’t know about yet. Will be interesting to follow further dissection. That the hardware is there points towards planned support for me.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    I suspect that the M1 GPU performs so well that it invalidates the need for GPUs for anyone who doesn’t really need a future Mac Pro with M1 blades. More power efficient, compact, etc. I imagine they pointedly don’t care to enable the crypto mining market, so cutting off eGPU is a great way to invalidate their platform as a cost-efficient target for miners, while also ending their silicon driver/support contracts cleanly for non-Apple silicon.
    - ulzeraj 5y ago
      Thats a shame. I suspect the M1 would blow heavy machines out of the water and become the only machine you've ever need if it could use an external egpu.
      - floatingatoll 5y ago
        What workloads are you referring to when you say "heavy machines"?

My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers. Is there something in the announcement that made you think this will never happen, or just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation?

ulzeraj 5y ago
> My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers. Jeff Geerling's work on Raspberry Pi modules and extension boards found out its not possible at least on the PI4: From https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-ras... "... so far, the answer seems to be 'no.' Partly it's due to lack of support for I/O BAR space on the BCM2711 ARM SoC, and partly it may be due to driver bugs or features that are only supported on X86 or certain ARM architectures." So I wonder when people like Marcan say the hardware is there do they mean that the M1 doesn't have such I/O limitations? I know Tallos Blackbird POWER9 boards can work with discrete GPUs. I don't know if they are making use but I imagine amdgpu kernel module should work just as fine on a different arch. > just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation? Yes that's the case.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
  The Raspberry Pi has a very different SoC from Apple's M1, why would it be relevant?
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    I was just wondering if PCI-E discrete GPUs can work on ARM platforms at all.
    - gsnedders 5y ago
      Sure, of course they can, there's nothing about the ISA that's relevant there.

floatingatoll 5y ago

Apple confirmed they won’t be supported during M1 announce week.

solarkraft 5y ago
Maybe they discovered some practical problems we don’t know about yet. Will be interesting to follow further dissection. That the hardware is there points towards planned support for me.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  I suspect that the M1 GPU performs so well that it invalidates the need for GPUs for anyone who doesn’t really need a future Mac Pro with M1 blades. More power efficient, compact, etc. I imagine they pointedly don’t care to enable the crypto mining market, so cutting off eGPU is a great way to invalidate their platform as a cost-efficient target for miners, while also ending their silicon driver/support contracts cleanly for non-Apple silicon.
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    Thats a shame. I suspect the M1 would blow heavy machines out of the water and become the only machine you've ever need if it could use an external egpu.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      What workloads are you referring to when you say "heavy machines"?