9 ms·

"Please temper your expectations: even with hardware documentation, an optimized Vulkan driver stack (with enough features to layer OpenGL 4.6 with Zink) requir

by Rygian 4y ago

"Please temper your expectations: even with hardware documentation, an optimized Vulkan driver stack (with enough features to layer OpenGL 4.6 with Zink) requires many years of full time work. At least for now, nobody is working on this driver full time3. Reverse-engineering slows the process considerably. We won’t be playing AAA games any time soon." From https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html

bscphil 4y ago
Yeah, it's because of this statement from an extremely trustworthy source that I'm looking for context here. I suspect most of the big problems haven't been suddenly and magically overcome? E.g. how close are we, given this, to supporting an AAA game, let's say from a few years ago?
- asiekierka 4y ago
  The key words are "optimized" and "OpenGL 4.6 with Zink". "Functional" and "OpenGL 2.1" is a different story, and the same trustworthy source said in https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html that: > thanks to the tremendous shared code in Mesa, a basic OpenGL driver is doable by a single person. I’m optimistic that we’ll have native OpenGL 2.1 in Asahi Linux by the end of the year. It's likely that even a bare-bones OpenGL driver will probably run better than llvmpipe, which is especially important in a laptop context due to the resulting power use improvements.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    Ah, so it's a "90% of the iceberg" situation. Great info, thanks!
- stu2b50 4y ago
  What AAA games run not only on Linux, but ARM Linux? This is more for going on YouTube with hardware acceleration than gaming, which is niche upon niche in its current state anyway.
  - delroth 4y ago
    Box64, FEX-Emu and other x86-64 on ARMv8 emulation projects cover that gap and explicitly target gaming as a core use case. And of course there's Apple's Rosetta, which we know is good enough for gaming on ARM macOS. Apple has released a Linux version which should technically be able to run on Asahi, but I'm unsure of the legal situation around this.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    Do Rosetta apps utilize the GPU on M1 (on macOS)?
    - jrk 4y ago
      Yes. The calls to the platform graphics APIs and underlying drivers are identical (and literally hit the same code), whether from x86/Rosetta or native/ARM64.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    You can always do this: https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation to run amd64 binaries on an arm64 machine, or vice-versa. Docker desktop sets this up so you can pull amd64-only Docker containers on your M1 and not notice. I did some very minimal testing and it's not even insanely slow or anything (but obviously for many games, you can't leave this much performance on the table). I do this on my workstation and can run anything, it's quite nice: $ lscpu | grep Architecture Architecture: x86_64 $ GOARCH=arm64 go build main.go $ file ./main ./main: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, ... $ ./main Hello, world.
- moondev 4y ago
  Let's set up a jira and hold sprint planning
bityard 4y ago
Totally non-sarcastic question: then why bother? It's an honest question. Even if someone (or a team) could somehow be paid for this work, by the time the results are usable, the hardware will be more or less functionally obsolete. And that is on top of the fact that ARM64 on MacOS will always be a small slice of the gaming pie, and ARM64 on Linux games and GPU applications virtually nonexistent.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  Same reason people bothered with Linux back in the 90s. It's about the journey not the destination. It's fun, enlightening, and there's a chance it becomes something big and impactful in the future.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  Gaming is not the only thing that uses a GPU. A driver that's complete/performant enough to run a Linux desktop and web browser is already useful.
  - 4m1rk 4y ago
    To me the whole point of using open source tech is the freedom. I want to have options, hardware or software. When Apple tries hard to remove itself from that list I probably won't fight to keep it there. I just cross it out of my list as if it doesn't exist. So I simply don't use Apple products. What do I miss?
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  Machine learning
- rrss 4y ago
  note it’s probably a lot less effort to add support for M2’s GPU than starting from scratch and having to reverse engineer everything. So eventually the gap between hardware release and fairly complete driver support could close quite a lot.
- bri3d 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
amelius 4y ago
Why doesn't Apple release the documentation? Isn't there anyone inside Apple who wants to have Linux? Isn't there anyone inside Apple who wants to help?
- shmerl 4y ago
  They are one of the worst lock-in minded companies. Making their hardware as closed as possible fits that.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Trying to take a non cynical take: at a business level Apple's hardware business was growing while other makers were having a hard time, and I think with their current advancement in processor tech and sheer production quality, they have captured most of the market they were probably expecting to capture. At this point, trying to expand the user base through sheer hardware improvement or trying to include fringe groups (windows dual boot users, linux user) probably has diminishing returns. In contrast, service revenue, app revenue and accessories like air pods, the Apple Watch have a much better ROI. What I'm coming at: they have little incentive to work hard to expand the user base, and a better ROI on expanding revenue from users of their software platform. So I'm not holding my breath on Apple actively helping for windows or linux support anytime soon.
  - amelius 4y ago
    So what you are saying is that engineers at Apple have nothing to say about this?
    - pdpi 4y ago
      They do, demonstrably, have some sort of say. The M1 Macs have had deliberate support for 3rd party OSes since more or less day 1 (just not exposed/advertised), and Apple made some early changes to enable Asahi. Some recent comments by marcan on the topic: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400

by Rygian 4y ago

bscphil 4y ago

Yeah, it's because of this statement from an extremely trustworthy source that I'm looking for context here. I suspect most of the big problems haven't been suddenly and magically overcome? E.g. how close are we, given this, to supporting an AAA game, let's say from a few years ago?

asiekierka 4y ago
The key words are "optimized" and "OpenGL 4.6 with Zink". "Functional" and "OpenGL 2.1" is a different story, and the same trustworthy source said in https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-6.html that: > thanks to the tremendous shared code in Mesa, a basic OpenGL driver is doable by a single person. I’m optimistic that we’ll have native OpenGL 2.1 in Asahi Linux by the end of the year. It's likely that even a bare-bones OpenGL driver will probably run better than llvmpipe, which is especially important in a laptop context due to the resulting power use improvements.
- bscphil 4y ago
  Ah, so it's a "90% of the iceberg" situation. Great info, thanks!
stu2b50 4y ago
What AAA games run not only on Linux, but ARM Linux? This is more for going on YouTube with hardware acceleration than gaming, which is niche upon niche in its current state anyway.
- delroth 4y ago
  Box64, FEX-Emu and other x86-64 on ARMv8 emulation projects cover that gap and explicitly target gaming as a core use case. And of course there's Apple's Rosetta, which we know is good enough for gaming on ARM macOS. Apple has released a Linux version which should technically be able to run on Asahi, but I'm unsure of the legal situation around this.
- bscphil 4y ago
  Do Rosetta apps utilize the GPU on M1 (on macOS)?
  - jrk 4y ago
    Yes. The calls to the platform graphics APIs and underlying drivers are identical (and literally hit the same code), whether from x86/Rosetta or native/ARM64.
- jrockway 4y ago
  You can always do this: https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation to run amd64 binaries on an arm64 machine, or vice-versa. Docker desktop sets this up so you can pull amd64-only Docker containers on your M1 and not notice. I did some very minimal testing and it's not even insanely slow or anything (but obviously for many games, you can't leave this much performance on the table). I do this on my workstation and can run anything, it's quite nice: $ lscpu | grep Architecture Architecture: x86_64 $ GOARCH=arm64 go build main.go $ file ./main ./main: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, ... $ ./main Hello, world.
moondev 4y ago
Let's set up a jira and hold sprint planning

bityard 4y ago

Totally non-sarcastic question: then why bother? It's an honest question. Even if someone (or a team) could somehow be paid for this work, by the time the results are usable, the hardware will be more or less functionally obsolete. And that is on top of the fact that ARM64 on MacOS will always be a small slice of the gaming pie, and ARM64 on Linux games and GPU applications virtually nonexistent.

SkyMarshal 4y ago
Same reason people bothered with Linux back in the 90s. It's about the journey not the destination. It's fun, enlightening, and there's a chance it becomes something big and impactful in the future.
Denvercoder9 4y ago
Gaming is not the only thing that uses a GPU. A driver that's complete/performant enough to run a Linux desktop and web browser is already useful.
- 4m1rk 4y ago
  To me the whole point of using open source tech is the freedom. I want to have options, hardware or software. When Apple tries hard to remove itself from that list I probably won't fight to keep it there. I just cross it out of my list as if it doesn't exist. So I simply don't use Apple products. What do I miss?
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Machine learning
rrss 4y ago
note it’s probably a lot less effort to add support for M2’s GPU than starting from scratch and having to reverse engineer everything. So eventually the gap between hardware release and fairly complete driver support could close quite a lot.
bri3d 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

amelius 4y ago

Why doesn't Apple release the documentation? Isn't there anyone inside Apple who wants to have Linux? Isn't there anyone inside Apple who wants to help?

shmerl 4y ago
They are one of the worst lock-in minded companies. Making their hardware as closed as possible fits that.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Trying to take a non cynical take: at a business level Apple's hardware business was growing while other makers were having a hard time, and I think with their current advancement in processor tech and sheer production quality, they have captured most of the market they were probably expecting to capture. At this point, trying to expand the user base through sheer hardware improvement or trying to include fringe groups (windows dual boot users, linux user) probably has diminishing returns. In contrast, service revenue, app revenue and accessories like air pods, the Apple Watch have a much better ROI. What I'm coming at: they have little incentive to work hard to expand the user base, and a better ROI on expanding revenue from users of their software platform. So I'm not holding my breath on Apple actively helping for windows or linux support anytime soon.
- amelius 4y ago
  So what you are saying is that engineers at Apple have nothing to say about this?
  - pdpi 4y ago
    They do, demonstrably, have some sort of say. The M1 Macs have had deliberate support for 3rd party OSes since more or less day 1 (just not exposed/advertised), and Apple made some early changes to enable Asahi. Some recent comments by marcan on the topic: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400