4 ms·

right, I'm sure that people who write low-level libs will be thrilled to optimize them for 0.1% of the iGPU market

sircastor 5y ago
If you’re writing a low-level library, don’t you want it to target specific architectures? Wouldn’t you want the abstraction happening higher up?
dev_tty01 5y ago
Curious, where does the 0.1% come from? Apple Mac US market share is over 14% and iPhone market share is over 50%. I get that you are just being a bit hyperbolic, but if a low-level lib ignores the Apple Silicon GPU hardware they are ignoring a sizable market segment. https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-quarterly-pc-shipment-share-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua... https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
- desiderantes 5y ago
  I know this is pretty common in hn, but you need to remember that the US is just one country, and not even the most populous country, in this world.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    Sure but what if the US Engineering population represents a large portion of your paid-user demographics. For a lot of HN's startups this is very much the case.
  - SZJX 5y ago
    That's not very relevant for the purpose of this discussion though. For example, a common stat floating around is how iPhone has 20% market share around the world but provides 80% of in-app revenue, which is what businesses care about.
  - boardwaalk 5y ago
    0.1% isn't close to the truth worldwide either, so it's inaccurate regardless.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      It's probably pretty close to the overall percentage of M1 Ultra owners, all things considered.
      - Tagbert 5y ago
        The question is what is the percentage of potential market for a specific product. If you are optimizing GPU code, that is a very different market from “all computers” or “all phones”. If the market depends on high performance GPUs, then the Ultra has potential to be a noticeable percentage of that market.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
        Well up until the M1 Ultra, almost no one was doing GPU intensive stuff on mac, since they didn't have a line with a decent gpu. As such, Apple is creating an issue for developers that only manifests on the $6000 version of their machine that requires rewriting your whole algorithm to work around.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Exactly. On top of that, Apple is still in the minority and refuses to support the Vulkan API they helped design. So, from a development standpoint, rewriting your software to support ~15% of your potential market isn't a very lucrative idea. Especially when the vast majority of those users will be running relatively incapable hardware, at least on the GPU side of things.
        5y ago
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    Yes, I agree. That's why I pointed out that it was specifically US market share. I just found those quickly. The percentages are lower in other regions, but the total numbers are still huge.
- motttoo 5y ago
  Based on the twitter thread this bottleneck only seems to apply to the M1 Ultra that is currently only in the $2k+ Mac Studio and no other Macs or phones so 0.1% doesn't sound too far off.
  - McDaveNZ 5y ago
    Nope. The same issues can be observed across all Apple Silicon GPUs but are most noticeable in M1s. Apple is currently the 3rd largest global PC vendor, if you add iPads they’ve been the 1st for quite some time. With wallet-share/spending power the target market is even larger. The question is whether developers should adopt Apple’s Accelerate/Metal APIs & optimise code for TBDR. It’s an obvious ‘yes’.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

If you’re writing a low-level library, don’t you want it to target specific architectures? Wouldn’t you want the abstraction happening higher up?

dev_tty01 5y ago

Curious, where does the 0.1% come from? Apple Mac US market share is over 14% and iPhone market share is over 50%. I get that you are just being a bit hyperbolic, but if a low-level lib ignores the Apple Silicon GPU hardware they are ignoring a sizable market segment. https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-quarterly-pc-shipment-share-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua... https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

desiderantes 5y ago
I know this is pretty common in hn, but you need to remember that the US is just one country, and not even the most populous country, in this world.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Sure but what if the US Engineering population represents a large portion of your paid-user demographics. For a lot of HN's startups this is very much the case.
- SZJX 5y ago
  That's not very relevant for the purpose of this discussion though. For example, a common stat floating around is how iPhone has 20% market share around the world but provides 80% of in-app revenue, which is what businesses care about.
- boardwaalk 5y ago
  0.1% isn't close to the truth worldwide either, so it's inaccurate regardless.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    It's probably pretty close to the overall percentage of M1 Ultra owners, all things considered.
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      The question is what is the percentage of potential market for a specific product. If you are optimizing GPU code, that is a very different market from “all computers” or “all phones”. If the market depends on high performance GPUs, then the Ultra has potential to be a noticeable percentage of that market.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
        Well up until the M1 Ultra, almost no one was doing GPU intensive stuff on mac, since they didn't have a line with a decent gpu. As such, Apple is creating an issue for developers that only manifests on the $6000 version of their machine that requires rewriting your whole algorithm to work around.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Exactly. On top of that, Apple is still in the minority and refuses to support the Vulkan API they helped design. So, from a development standpoint, rewriting your software to support ~15% of your potential market isn't a very lucrative idea. Especially when the vast majority of those users will be running relatively incapable hardware, at least on the GPU side of things.
        5y ago
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  Yes, I agree. That's why I pointed out that it was specifically US market share. I just found those quickly. The percentages are lower in other regions, but the total numbers are still huge.
motttoo 5y ago
Based on the twitter thread this bottleneck only seems to apply to the M1 Ultra that is currently only in the $2k+ Mac Studio and no other Macs or phones so 0.1% doesn't sound too far off.
- McDaveNZ 5y ago
  Nope. The same issues can be observed across all Apple Silicon GPUs but are most noticeable in M1s. Apple is currently the 3rd largest global PC vendor, if you add iPads they’ve been the 1st for quite some time. With wallet-share/spending power the target market is even larger. The question is whether developers should adopt Apple’s Accelerate/Metal APIs & optimise code for TBDR. It’s an obvious ‘yes’.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]